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| A conceptual illustration of cryptocurrency security risks and the challenges of building trust in a digital financial future. |
According to blockchain analysts, most of the money left in about twenty minutes.
On the evening of Thursday 29 October 2026, unauthorised withdrawals began draining the hot wallets of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. Binance estimates that about $6.3 billion was affected, which, according to current estimates from TRM Labs and Elliptic, makes it the largest crypto theft recorded to date and roughly four times the size of the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025. Two days later the FBI named North Korea as the culprit. By the weekend, Binance said it had already replaced about 90% of the loss from its own funds.
That is a lot of headline for one week. But if you hold crypto, or know someone who does, the details underneath matter more than the total. In Pakistan, where millions of people have used Binance, they matter a great deal.
What we know so far
- What happened. Unauthorised withdrawals were made from the hot-wallet systems of the global Binance.com platform. Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals while it investigated. Binance.US was reported to be unaffected (TechJuice).
- How big it was. Binance says about $6.3 billion. TRM Labs puts it at about $6.36 billion at the prices on the day, and Elliptic at $6.43 billion. The gap comes from how each firm counts and prices the stolen assets. Both agree it is the largest theft in crypto history (TRM Labs, Elliptic).
- Who the FBI blames. In a statement on Saturday 31 October, the FBI said North Korea was responsible for the theft of more than $6 billion and attributed it to a group it calls TraderTraitor. It said it had seen the attackers converting stolen assets into Ethereum and expects further laundering through decentralised finance (DeFi) apps and instant swap services (Euronews). TRM and Elliptic had reached the same conclusion earlier.
- What happens to customers. Binance has promised to cover the losses with company money, including its user-protection reserve known as SAFU. It says about 90% has been covered so far, and that the remaining 10% is harder to convert quickly. Withdrawals are being restored in phases (Euronews, Safe Security).
One distinction is easy to miss. Replacing customers' balances from a company's reserves is not the same as getting the stolen money back. Binance says it will cover affected users' losses and reports that most of the required replacement assets have been secured. The thieves, for now, still have a large part of the loot.
How can one laptop put billions at risk?
Binance's early explanation is that the incident "may involve" a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, meaning one of the people who keep the company's servers running. According to the company's preliminary findings, the attacker used that access to reach an internal service and submit withdrawal requests. Binance says it found no evidence that wallet private keys were leaked. It has not yet published a final root cause (Safe Security's summary).
Independent analysts add a technical twist. TRM Labs says the evidence points to the exchange's wallet-signing systems being compromised. On Ethereum, the attacker used a feature called EIP-7702 to turn one of Binance's hot wallets into a "sweeper" that sent funds straight to the thief. On nine other blockchains, funds moved out through ordinary signed transfers inside the same short window. TRM says that is hard to explain with a single phishing email, which suggests the attackers had deep access and had prepared well in advance.
In plain words, a hot wallet is the exchange's cash drawer: connected to the internet so customers can withdraw quickly. Thinking about the whole system as three layers makes the story clearer:
- The blockchain. Bitcoin, Ethereum and the others kept recording transactions exactly as designed. Nothing was "hacked" at this level.
- The exchange. This is the company that holds customers' coins, runs the wallets and decides who may authorise a withdrawal.
- The people and devices. The engineers, laptops, passwords and approvals that give anyone access to layer two.
The money was lost at layers two and three. That is the uncomfortable point of the whole story: a technology famous for being hard to tamper with was drained through an ordinary workday device and the systems behind it.
The detail few people expected: some of the money could be frozen
Here is the part that makes this theft different from a simple "hackers got rich" story. Not all stolen crypto is equal.
| Type of asset | Can anyone freeze it? | What happened here |
|---|---|---|
| Stablecoins and other restricted assets | Yes. Centralised stablecoin issuers such as Tether and Circle can freeze tokens under their control. | Roughly $2.7 to $2.85 billion frozen, including about $1.77 billion by Tether and $825 million by Circle. |
| Bitcoin, Ether and similar coins | Not in the same way. There is no central issuer with the direct freeze control that a stablecoin issuer has. | Analysts estimate that approximately $2.7–$2.85 billion in assets linked to the incident had been frozen or restricted through coordinated action. This includes stablecoins frozen by issuers and other assets restricted by blockchain networks. TRM Labs and Elliptic use different methods and reporting cut-offs, so their totals are not directly identical. |
Figures are from TRM Labs and Elliptic, whose estimates differ slightly.
There is an irony in that table. Crypto is often sold as money with no middlemen. Yet in this case, the stolen dollar-linked coins could be stopped by contacting two companies, while Bitcoin has no central issuer with the same direct freeze control.
The thieves also seem to have felt the pressure. Both analyst firms report that the attacker sold hundreds of millions of dollars of stablecoins in a hurry, at discounts of 10% or more, to get out before the freezes landed. Elliptic also notes that the main laundering wallet it is tracking on the Tron network made 546 transfers in a matter of days, with a median gap of just 96 seconds between them. That pattern points to software doing the work. Elliptic says it cannot yet tell whether any AI agents are involved, and nobody should claim they are without evidence.
"Binance will cover it." Does that mean you are safe?
For now, the signs are reassuring. Binance has the resources, a dedicated reserve fund and a public promise, and it says it has already secured most of the assets needed to replace the loss. Binance says it will cover affected users’ losses, so customers should not assume their balances have been lost. The final position still depends on Binance’s ongoing remediation and reporting.
Still, it is worth being clear about what a promise is. It is not insurance, and it is not a law. Bank deposits in many countries are protected by deposit-insurance schemes. Balances on a crypto exchange usually are not. Binance can afford to make this promise. A smaller exchange hit by a smaller attack might not be able to.
Pakistan makes the question practical. Figures that sources attributed to Binance in December 2025 put its Pakistani user base at about 17.5 million registered accounts, around 4 million of them active, holding roughly $5 billion in assets (Dawn). Those are Binance's own numbers and have not been independently audited. The country's virtual assets regulator, PVARA, has issued Binance a No Objection Certificate, which lets it prepare a formal licence application but is not a full operating licence (PVARA). In other words, millions of people are using a platform whose local rules are still being built.
What Pakistani users can do this week
None of this is financial advice, and nobody can promise you a risk-free setup. These are sensible habits that cost nothing.
- Stay calm and stay official. Do not panic-sell or panic-withdraw because of a rumour. Read Binance's announcements by typing the address yourself, not by following a link someone sent you.
- Treat every "refund" or "compensation" message as a scam. Big incidents attract impersonators. ForkLog has reported earlier campaigns of fake "hacker alert" text messages aimed at Binance users (ForkLog). Never share a one-time code, never install a "support" app and never allow screen sharing, whoever claims to be calling.
- Tighten your own account. Use an authenticator app or a hardware key instead of SMS codes. Turn on the anti-phishing code and the withdrawal-address whitelist. Review your logged-in devices and delete any API keys you do not use. Use a unique password kept in a password manager.
- Keep only what you actively trade on an exchange. For long-term savings, consider a wallet you control yourself, but learn how it works first. If you lose the recovery phrase, nobody can restore it for you, so self-custody has its own risks.
- Do not put everything in one place, and do not borrow to buy crypto. This week showed that even the biggest platform can have a very bad day.
- Keep records, and report fraud. Save screenshots of balances and transactions. If you are targeted by a scam, report it to the National Cyber Crime Investigation Agency (NCCIA).
AI: useful defender, useful weapon
The speed of this attack is its own lesson. When most of the money moves in twenty minutes, no human team can watch every screen and react in time. Detection has to be automatic, and this is where AI-based monitoring can help: spotting a strange pattern of withdrawals, an unusual login or a sudden change to wallet permissions, and raising an alarm that a person can act on.
A security analysis of the incident makes a related point that applies well beyond crypto: a request can be technically valid without being legitimate. A system can check that a signature is correct and still miss that it just handed control of a wallet to a stranger. Good defences check what an approval actually does, not only whether it is properly signed (Safe Security).
The same technology also helps the other side. Scammers can already write polished messages in English and Urdu, clone voices and run thousands of conversations at once. There is no public evidence that AI was used to carry out this particular theft, so that claim should be treated with caution. But for ordinary users, the practical rule is the same either way: a message that sounds perfect is no longer proof that it is real.
What this does and does not say about "cashless Pakistan"
Pakistan’s shift towards digital payments is accelerating. According to the State Bank of Pakistan’s Annual Payment Systems Report for FY2025–26, retail payments reached 14.3 billion transactions, with digital channels accounting for 92% by transaction volume. This reflects the growing use of mobile banking, internet banking and digital wallets across the country. However, the expansion of digital payments should not be confused with the adoption of cryptocurrency. They are different financial systems, with different risks, regulations and consumer protections. A more digital economy still depends on secure infrastructure, reliable institutions and public trust.
Those payments run on regulated banking and e-money systems, with complaint routes and a central bank watching. A crypto exchange is a different animal: a private company holding enormous value under rules that are younger and thinner. So the Binance theft is not really a story about digital payments failing. It is a story about what happens when a private custodian becomes a single point of failure.
It also carries an old lesson about resilience. A cyberattack, a network outage or a lost phone can cut anyone off from an app. Cash, for all its inconvenience, still works when the servers do not. A sensible digital economy keeps more than one option open.
What we still do not know
- How the engineer's laptop was compromised, and whether that was truly the starting point.
- Which approvals and controls failed, and why they did not stop a withdrawal spree across many blockchains.
- How much of the remaining stolen money can ever be recovered or frozen.
- The final net loss. Binance has said a fuller technical report will follow, and that is the document worth waiting for.
Three questions worth asking any platform that holds your money
The lesson of this week is not "never use crypto" and it is not "blockchain is safe, so relax". It is simpler. Trust should attach to specific things you can ask about, not to a word like "blockchain":
- Who can authorise a withdrawal? One person, one device, or several independent approvals?
- How fast can it be stopped? Minutes, as this week showed, can be too slow.
- What happens to me if it fails? A reserve fund, insurance or only a promise?
Technology can answer the first two questions well. Only honest reporting, good regulation and a track record can answer the third. The future of digital money will depend on getting all three right.
This article is for general information and is not financial, investment or legal advice. Crypto assets are volatile and can lose their value entirely. If you spot an error, please tell us and we will correct it promptly.
Sources
- TRM Labs: North Korea steals USD 6.36 billion from Binance in the largest hack in history
- Elliptic: The largest theft in history, North Korea likely behind the Binance hack
- Euronews: FBI blames North Korea for $6.3 billion Binance crypto hack, 1 November 2026
- Safe Security: Binance's $6.3 billion security incident, what happened and how the funds moved
- TechJuice: Binance hit by $6.3 billion hack, 30 October 2026
- Dawn — 92pc of retail transactions are digital (October 7, 2026)
- Finance Magnates: Pakistan busts $60M crypto scam as it paves way for Binance, HTX to enter market
- Pakistan Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (PVARA): news page, including the 12 December 2025 item on no-objection certificates for Binance and HTX
- https://forklog.com/en/sms-scammers-target-binance-users-with-fake-hacker-alerts/
- State Bank of Pakistan — Publications
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