At least $5.57 billion vanished from Binance overnight on 29 October, in what could become crypto's largest-ever hack. Here Kaupr gathers what we know: how the money disappeared, how the hack was carried out, and what happens next.
Binance is the world's largest crypto exchange by trading volume. Overnight on 29 October, several of the exchange's hot wallets – internet-connected wallets used to pay out customer withdrawals – were drained of at least $5.57 billion across Ethereum, Bitcoin and Tron. If the figure is confirmed in full, it is the largest theft from a crypto exchange ever, far surpassing the previous record holder Bybit, which lost around $1.5 billion in February 2025. Kaupr is covering the incident across several articles as details emerge, and this overview – like the front page – will be updated through the day on Friday.
Kaupr has, in a separate article, gone through the hours in which the money disappeared: how the wallets labelled Binance 14, Binance 16 and Binance: Hot Wallet 34 were drained of ether, USDT and USDC within minutes, CZ's first reaction on X, and how Tether and Circle had, by that same evening, frozen more than $2.3 billion on the addresses that received the funds.
A follow-up article from Kaupr explains the technical mechanism behind the hack: a signed authorization under the EIP-7702 standard, which let the sender install a contract that could only be controlled by their own address. Of 50 authorizations sent in the same transaction, it only took one being approved – four minutes later the wallet was empty.
A third article from Kaupr shows how far the shock spread through the market: $628 million in leveraged positions were forcibly closed within the hour after the hack became known, and bitcoin fell further overnight to $77,771 as Asian trading opened. Solana and XRP withdrawals from Binance remained halted.
In a separate article, Kaupr covers Binance's pledge to cover all losses after the hack, while withdrawals on several networks remain suspended and the exchange runs security scans and works with police. The combined frozen total has climbed to around $2.8 billion.
An explainer from Kaupr walks through Binance's emergency fund SAFU, which now holds about 15,000 bitcoin – worth just under $1 billion – and was set up precisely to cover user losses from security breaches like this one.
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