Bitunix Analyst:Binance Loses Over$6.3B in Theft—Exchange Custody Security Tested Again

October 30—The crypto market absorbed a double shock of leveraged liquidations and a major security incident. According to CoinGlass, 239,224 traders were liquidated in the past 24 hours for a combined $1.536 billion, with the single largest liquidation on Binance BTCUSDT at roughly $11.09 million. Over the same period, Binance』s multichain hot wallets were attacked—and TRM Labs has tracked roughly $6.36 billion in assets moved out across ten blockchains, exceeding the Bybit incident and making this the largest crypto theft on record.

TRM notes that the attacker had pre-deployed scripts and exploited Ethereum』s EIP-7702 pre-signed authorization along with hot-wallet signing flows on other chains to move assets—attributing the incident with high confidence to North Korea』s TraderTraitor group. This remains a security firm』s investigative assessment, not an official judicial finding. Binance』s October 30 preliminary report indicates the incident may have involved a compromised DevOps engineer laptop, with attackers subsequently accessing service containers and submitting unauthorized withdrawals. No evidence of direct wallet private-key leakage has been found.

Binance says it has frozen approximately $3 billion in assets and will cover losses using the SAFU fund and company reserves. However, on-chain tracking still estimates roughly $3.1 billion remains freely movable—primarily BTC and ETH. What this incident truly tests is not any single wallet, but the exchange』s permission isolation across engineering devices, service containers, and transaction signing mechanisms. Even if private keys are not directly leaked, once authorization flows are hijacked, hot wallets can still become gateways for large-scale asset transfers.

When high-leverage liquidations and a custody trust crisis overlap, market risk no longer stays confined to price volatility—it can also extend into counterparty risk and liquidity discounts. Ahead, markets should watch for withdrawal service restoration, whether the remaining assets continue to move, changes in the frozen amount, and whether Binance』s full technical report and proof-of-reserves can repair market confidence.