The Binance Hack: $6.36 Billion and the Question of Trust

31 October 2026 — What follows about the incident is based on the statements and analyses linked below; details may change as the investigation continues.

$6.36 billion. It is easy to read the number and move on. Stopping for a few seconds to think about what it actually means is far less comfortable.

Imagine moving that much money physically. Vehicles, vaults, doors, security guards… Cinema taught us that this is what a great heist looks like. Months of planning, dark corridors, silenced alarms, escape routes.

In the digital world, billions of dollars in assets can change hands without any of those scenes.

According to TRM Labs, the assets that left Binance wallets on 29 October came to roughly $6.36 billion, and most of the movement happened in about 20 minutes. Binance itself put the impact at around $6.3 billion. Different sources, approximate figures, the same incident…

And you know what? I can’t stop thinking about those 20 minutes.

The time it takes to drink a coffee. The opening remarks of a meeting. A stretch in traffic we can barely remember afterwards.

Meanwhile, somewhere in the world, billions of dollars in assets were being moved to other addresses.

We don’t know where the attackers were sitting. But the fact that a theft like this didn’t even require them to enter the victim’s building is unsettling enough.

The part of me that wants more technology in my life and the part of me that felt a knot in my stomach reading this news are the same person. And today they are not getting along.

While we enjoy what technology gives us, are we forgetting the power it hands to bad intentions?

I don’t want to give up what technology offers us.

It speeds up our work. It makes information easier to reach. It puts productions that once needed serious budgets and teams within reach. We can work with people on the other side of the world and turn ideas into something concrete within hours.

All of this excites me. Then news like this arrives, and a different sentence forms in my mind:

How defenceless are those of us who benefit from technology against the harm done by people using the very same technology with bad intent?

Sometimes that defencelessness feels like helplessness to me.

Because as we develop technology, we can’t develop good intentions at the same pace. We can build faster systems; there is no update that produces more conscientious people.

A transaction completing in seconds is a convenience for me. For someone with bad intentions, the same speed is a chance to do more damage before anyone can step in.

This is exactly where my faith in progress is tested. I want to be sure that every development that makes life easier gets the same seriousness on the security side. But I don’t always hear control and responsibility discussed as much as speed, growth and user numbers.

What happened in the Binance attack? The uncomfortable truth inside the technical detail

It is easy to sum it up as “hackers found a hole and took the money”. But that sentence isn’t enough to understand what happened.

According to Hypernative’s on-chain analysis, the outflows on different networks used valid signatures from wallets under Binance’s control. On Ethereum, a feature called EIP-7702 appears to have been used to authorise a wallet to run code controlled by the attacker.

Think of it this way: a lock opens when it accepts the key it is given as the right one. But the lock can’t judge whether the person opening the door actually has the right to take what is inside.

The gap between a digital signature being technically valid and a transaction being legitimate works much the same way.

Ethereum’s delegation mechanism lets an ordinary account act through code it has chosen. According to the analysis, the authorisation granted in this incident let the attacker move assets out of that wallet again later without a new signature. The outflows on the other networks, however, can’t all be explained by this Ethereum feature.

What unsettles me is this: a system can enable an enormous theft while carrying out a transaction that looks valid by its own rules.

As a user, when I hear “there is a security system”, I assume it will stop malicious transactions too. Yet what security checks, and at which stage, matters far more than I had assumed.

Who can initiate a transaction? Who approves it? How long does an authorisation stay open? Under what conditions is an unusually large movement stopped?

I can use the app without knowing the answers to any of these questions. That is where the line between convenience and dependence starts to blur.

Who did it? The distance between what we want to know and what we know

TRM Labs attributes the attack, with high confidence, to TraderTraitor, a group linked to North Korea. The assessment rests on transaction traces and similarities with earlier attacks; it is not a final judicial verdict on who is responsible.

With news like this, we all want a quick answer. If we learn who did it, it feels as if we could regain a little control over what happened.

But knowing a group’s name doesn’t address my real worry.

I also want to know at which stage this could have been stopped. I want to understand why it wasn’t stopped there. I want to hear which control will work differently next time.

After an incident, we may assume an explanation gets stronger as the technical terms pile up. For users, though, the most valuable explanation is the one they can understand.

“This happened, we failed at this point, we changed this, and this is how we will check that the change works.”

That is the language I need in order to trust.

Around $3 billion frozen: but has the money been recovered?

Binance said that, working with industry partners, about $3 billion in assets has been frozen on-chain.

That is an important development. But when we read “frozen”, we shouldn’t automatically translate it in our heads into “returned to its owner”.

For some tokens such as USDC, the issuer can block transfers to and from specific addresses. Such an intervention can restrict an asset’s movement; it doesn’t mean a past transfer is reversed on its own. Circle’s terms describe the power to block addresses and the irreversibility of transactions as two separate things.

So theft, freezing, recovery and returning funds to their rightful owners are all separate stages.

Part of me wants to say, “Some of it is frozen; as for the rest, good luck.” I understand that reaction. But claiming that every asset not yet frozen is lost forever would also go beyond what we actually know.

Hypernative reports that some assets have been frozen, others have not, and some are still on the move. The final recovery figure can’t yet be read from this picture.

That uncertainty is exhausting in itself.

Being able to see on a screen where the money is isn’t the same as being able to get it back. Transparency matters, but we can still feel powerless in front of a loss we are able to track.

We want freedom, yet in a crisis we expect someone to step in

I think this is where one of the hardest contradictions of the crypto world shows itself.

We want to depend less on intermediaries. We want more control over our assets. We value being able to transact without relying on someone else’s decision.

Then, when an attack happens, we immediately ask:

“Is there really no one who can stop this?”

For some tokens, the power to intervene can give victims hope. In another debate, the same power becomes a worry about central control.

I understand both feelings.

I want a say over my own money. I also want a mechanism I can turn to when I make a mistake or come under attack.

There is a contradiction in that wish. It is there because I am human.

When we talk about a system’s advantages, we also need to talk about what we will have given up on the hard days. Talking about freedom only while things are going well feels incomplete to me.

Binance says it will cover the losses. Can trust be restored the same way?

Binance said it would not pass the financial impact on to its users, and set aside more than $6.34 billion of company funds to cover the losses. That is the company’s public commitment; it doesn’t mean every recovery and compensation process is complete.

For users, of course, it matters a great deal.

But I don’t think trust works like an account statement.

Once the missing amount is replaced, the gap in the balance may close. The question that has opened in your mind may not close so quickly:

“Could this happen again?”

Living with that question means starting to think about transactions you used to make without a second thought. It means feeling a small hesitation when you open the app. It means looking at a size you once found reassuring with different eyes.

After an incident like this, how openly a company speaks matters to me as much as how much money it sets aside. Being able to explain failure clearly is part of rebuilding trust.

I would rather trust responsibility that can be checked than a claim of perfection.

Should we really keep some of our money under the mattress?

We almost feel a little embarrassed to ask.

In the middle of conversations about digital transformation, AI and blockchain, cash kept at home suddenly comes to mind. Being so eager for the future while missing the reassurance of an old habit feels strange.

But beneath that question lies an understandable need: to feel that at least some of the control is in our hands.

We want something we can touch, see, and know the whereabouts of. Something we can reach without resetting a password, opening a support ticket or waiting for a system to come back online.

I can’t dismiss the emotional weight of that.

Still, I can’t conclude from it that you should “keep all your money at home”. Physical storage has its own risks: theft, fire, loss. Keeping money where I can see it doesn’t remove every danger.

The personal conclusion I draw from this incident is not to run wherever panic points first. It is to question more honestly what my trust is based on.

Do I use a service because I genuinely understand it? Because everyone else does? Because it is big? Because it is easy to use? Because asking hard questions would disturb my comfort?

I may not like some of the answers.

But an uncomfortable answer can be worth more than an unquestioned comfort.

We can’t leave the whole burden of security to ordinary users

After incidents like this, the advice tends to land in the same place: be more careful, protect your password, don’t click on links.

That advice has value. But after an attack on corporate infrastructure, turning the whole conversation towards individual user behaviour doesn’t seem fair to me.

Someone who trusts a service can’t be expected to audit that service’s signing system. People work, look after their families, get on with their lives. Not everyone can become a cybersecurity expert just to reach their own money.

While we expect care from users, we should expect clear explanations, strong controls and accountability from institutions.

The more complex technology becomes, the greater, in my eyes, the duty of those who offer it to explain it.

“It’s too technical, it’s hard to explain” cannot be the last word on a trust relationship worth billions of dollars.

I’m afraid. Even so, I don’t want to turn my back on the future.

This news scares me.

The size of the sum scares me, and so do the speed of the transactions and how little control an ordinary user has over any of it. We have grown used to our savings appearing as a few lines on a screen; realising how rarely we think about the trust behind those lines scares me too.

But I don’t want this fear to turn me against every new thing.

Thanks to technology, I create. I learn. I communicate. In many areas of my life, I benefit from the possibilities it opens up. I am part of the world that made this very piece possible.

Perhaps what I need to do from now on is to set more questions beside my excitement.

To be as curious about what happens when a product goes wrong as I am about how fast it works. To listen to what it will give me while also trying to understand which responsibility it leaves with me.

That $6.36 billion could be stolen is no longer, for me, a technology story that can stay at a distance.

It makes me look back at my own life. It makes me ask how much of what I call trust rests on knowledge, and how much on habit.

Maybe I won’t put my money under the mattress.

But I won’t be able to say “surely someone has taken care of security” as easily as I used to.

Ahmet Şükrü Altındağ · Founder, Gamechangers

If $6.36 Billion Can Be Stolen, What Are We Trusting?