{"id":31576,"date":"2026-10-30T15:34:03","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T15:34:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/moneyinsiderzone.com\/?p=31576"},"modified":"2026-10-30T15:34:03","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T15:34:03","slug":"is-binance-being-hacked-billions-leave-hot-wallets-as-tether-and-circle-freeze-funds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moneyinsiderzone.com\/?p=31576","title":{"rendered":"Is Binance being hacked? Billions leave hot wallets as Tether and Circle freeze funds"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Billions of dollars left wallets labelled as Binance hot wallets on Thursday afternoon, prompting a scramble across crypto markets and raising fresh questions about whether customer deposits on the world\u2019s largest exchange are at risk.<\/p>\n

Early on-chain reports put the Ethereum-side outflow above $2 billion. Later tallies from Decrypt and Arkham Intelligence put the total closer to $5.5 billion to $5.7 billion across Ethereum, Bitcoin and Tron. <\/p>\n

Binance has not confirmed a hack, but founder Changpeng Zhao said the activity \u201cdoes look like a hack,\u201d while stressing that he no longer runs the exchange.<\/p>\n

What the blockchain shows<\/h2>\n

At about 20:24 UTC on 29 October, a wallet Etherscan labels Binance 14 sent 167,464 ETH and dozens of tokens, including more than $1.6 billion in USDT, to a brand-new address, according to Etherscan data cited by BeInCrypto and Unchained.<\/p>\n

Seconds later, another labelled wallet, Binance 16, sent a further 28,005 ETH to the same destination. Within minutes, much of the ether was forwarded again to yet another fresh address, a pattern researchers often associate with theft rather than routine treasury moves.<\/p>\n

The transfer was triggered through an EIP-7702 delegation set up by an address that had been funded via Tornado Cash, a mixer that obscures the origin of coins. <\/p>\n

Pseudonymous researcher Spreek flagged the activity on X, noting that it \u201ccould be routine wallet maintenance, but it looks extremely sus.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hot wallets are the internet-connected pools exchanges use to process withdrawals. Exchanges do reshuffle those balances. What raised alarms here was the mixer-seeded trigger, the brand-new receiving addresses, and the speed at which funds were pushed onward.<\/p>\n

Binance, CZ and the freezes<\/h2>\n

Binance first said on X that it was aware of reports of a \u201cpotential security issue,\u201d was investigating, and had \u201cnot confirmed any impact to user funds.\u201d<\/p>\n

It later said user funds were \u201ccompletely safe,\u201d and warned customers not to trust unofficial links or requests for account details.<\/p>\n

Zhao posted that user funds were safe and that, as a shareholder, he expected any losses to be fully covered. <\/p>\n

Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the firm had frozen more than $1.57 billion in USDT linked to the incident. <\/p>\n

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said Circle had frozen more than $800 million in USDC in coordination with law enforcement. Combined freezes were reported around $1.8 billion, with some later tallies higher.<\/p>\n

Market reaction and what comes next<\/h2>\n

Bitcoin fell toward $79,000 and BNB dropped about 7% as the news spread, CoinDesk and Decrypt reported. <\/p>\n

CoinDesk also said the exploiter had borrowed about 20,000 wrapped ETH on Aave using stolen USDT as collateral.<\/p>\n

If confirmed, the drain would dwarf Binance\u2019s 2019 theft of about 7,000 bitcoin and would exceed the roughly $1.5 billion Bybit hack of February 2025.<\/p>\n

Until Binance publishes a verified account of what happened, the hard facts remain on-chain: billions left labelled hot wallets, stablecoin issuers froze a large share of the haul, and the exchange insists customer balances are covered.<\/p>\n

The post Is Binance being hacked? Billions leave hot wallets as Tether and Circle freeze funds<\/a> appeared first on Invezz<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Billions of dollars left wallets labelled as Binance hot wallets on Thursday afternoon, prompting a scramble across crypto markets and raising fresh questions about whether customer deposits on the world\u2019s largest exchange are at risk. Early on-chain reports put the Ethereum-side outflow above $2 billion. Later tallies from Decrypt and Arkham Intelligence put the total […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31577,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-31576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crypto-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moneyinsiderzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moneyinsiderzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moneyinsiderzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moneyinsiderzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moneyinsiderzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=31576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moneyinsiderzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moneyinsiderzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/31577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moneyinsiderzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=31576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moneyinsiderzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=31576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moneyinsiderzone.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=31576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}