Binance Sees $4.7 Billion Net Outflow After Reopening, Though Analysts Say Customer Confidence Has Largely Held
Binance Sees $4.7 Billion Net Outflow After Reopening, Though Analysts Say Customer Confidence Has Largely Held #
Binance has recorded net customer withdrawals of about $4.7 billion since it partially resumed operations following the $6.3 billion hack attributed to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group, though the world’s largest crypto exchange says the initial panic appears to be fading.
Blockchain analytics platform DeFiLlama showed total withdrawals reaching $4.9 billion by Monday morning, representing about 2.8 percent of assets held on the platform at the time of the breach, according to Reuters. Analysts cited that proportion as evidence that customer confidence had not been critically damaged. Binance confirmed that $2.7 billion in fresh inflows had partially offset the outflows over the same period.
The exchange said $3.64 billion was pulled within the first nine and a half hours of reopening, a sharp initial surge that slowed considerably after that. “After an initial spike, withdrawal volumes have declined and are stabilizing,” the company said in a statement on X. Co-CEO Yi He said security remained the top priority before full operations could resume.
Withdrawals were restored in a phased rollout beginning November 1, three days after the October 29 attack drained about $6.3 billion in token assets from Binance’s hot wallets across multiple blockchains in under four hours. Bitcoin transfers were re-enabled first, followed by Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, XRP, Base and Polygon networks. The exchange restored U.S. dollar cash withdrawals on Monday. Partial suspensions remained in place for some other cryptocurrencies as of that date.
To cover customer assets, Binance said it had drawn on its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), a portion of its Futures insurance fund, and its corporate treasury. By the start of this week, the exchange said it had covered about 95 percent of the stolen amount, with the remaining gap tied to less liquid tokens it is still in the process of acquiring.
The outflow figures, while large in absolute terms, compare favorably with past crypto crises. Following the collapse of FTX in December 2022, Binance processed about $6 billion in net outflows over 72 hours. Circle’s USDC stablecoin saw around $7 billion leave in a week after the Silicon Valley Bank failure in 2023.
Some traders told Reuters they intend to keep their accounts open. Jay Koh, vice president of the Asia Web3 AI Association, a Singapore-based blockchain advocacy group, said centralized exchanges continued to play an important role in liquidity, trading and market access. Binance has more than 335 million registered users and reports average daily trading volumes of $95 billion across digital assets and derivatives.
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