Binance says it holds $5B in matching tokens to cover hack losses
Binance said Friday that had set aside more than $6.34 billion in company funds to cover losses from its hack, with $5 billion already in held in the same tokens stolen.
“The $5 billion is held in the exact token assets that are required. These assets are in Binance custody,” a Binance spokesperson told Cointelegraph.
Binance did not disclose when it acquired the assets.
The spokesperson declined to disclose the wallet addresses, citing security reasons, but said that the holdings would appear in the exchange’s next proof-of-reserves report, which shows the assets it holds to back customer balances.
Binance said it provides weekly reports on its company funds to the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA), the financial regulator of Abu Dhabi Global Market in the United Arab Emirates. The exchange said the requirement predated the hack.
The exchange has yet to confirm which tokens it still needs to purchase, when those purchases will be completed or how much stolen crypto has been recovered.
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The exchange confirmed Friday that it had suffered a $6.3 billion hack, the largest cryptocurrency theft on record. Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs said funds were drained from Binance wallets across 10 blockchains on Thursday and attributed the attack to North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor.
Binance said about $3 billion in affected assets had been frozen with help from blockchain partners. Those assets were excluded from the company funds set aside to cover losses.
CertiK awaits more details to verify Binance’s $5 billion holdings
CertiK told Cointelegraph that it needed more information from Binance to assess whether the claimed $5 billion in affected tokens could be independently verified on-chain.
Earlier Friday, CertiK CEO Ronghui Gu estimated that approximately $3 billion in frozen assets and Binance’s $1.17 billion emergency fund could cover about 66% of the reported losses, leaving a potential $2.1 billion gap.
Gu said the estimated gap represented about 1.3% of Binance’s reported $165 billion in exchange reserves. Those reserves include assets backing customer balances.
Binance founders cite revenue and existing holdings
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said Friday the company’s SpaceX holdings alone, linked to a $500 million investment in Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, were worth more than $1 billion.
Binance co-founder Yi He said that the exchange’s revenue for the year was sufficient to cover the hack losses and that the company did not need to sell its stake in SpaceX.
Zhao also said Binance accumulates the cryptocurrencies it lists because customers can pay trading fees in those tokens. In a separate post, he said Gulf, Binance’s partner in Thailand, had offered financial support.
Zhao, who stepped down as CEO in 2023 and later served four months in a US prison over anti-money-laundering violations, remains a major Binance shareholder. Forbes estimated his personal fortune at approximately $115 billion.
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