Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has restored approximately 90% of the digital assets stolen in a $6.3 billion security breach, using its own financial resources to
purchase replacement tokens. The company said on Saturday that it remains committed to recovering the outstanding balance.
The exchange explained that the remaining 10% involves cryptocurrencies with lower liquidity, making it more difficult and time-consuming to acquire the necessary quantities.
“We've now replenished 90% of the stolen assets, and we're committed to covering the remaining 10%. Our users will not bear the financial impact of this incident,” Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said in a statement published on X.
The announcement comes as cryptocurrency markets experienced a downturn on Friday, with Binance working to reassure customers following one of the largest thefts in the industry's history. Blockchain analysts have linked the attack to North Korea.
Teng previously described the incident as a sophisticated operation involving a compromised laptop and malicious software allegedly designed to erase traces of its activity. The measures reportedly complicated efforts to investigate the breach and establish how the attackers gained access.
Following the incident, Binance temporarily suspended customer withdrawals while assessing the security of its systems and the extent of the losses. The company said on Saturday that it remained on schedule to restore withdrawal services on Sunday.
Binance has allocated approximately $6.34 billion in internal corporate resources to compensate for the stolen assets. According to the exchange, the replacement purchases were financed through several sources, including part of its $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), its Futures insurance fund and its corporate treasury.
SAFU is a reserve established by Binance to provide financial protection for customers in the event of security incidents. The exchange said the fund's resources were used alongside other company assets to restore the stolen holdings.
The company also announced that it had completed a fresh snapshot of customer assets held on its platform at 00:00 GMT on October 31, as part of its ongoing proof-of-reserves verification process.
Binance said customers holding ten specified cryptocurrencies — Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT), BNB, Solana (SOL), USD Coin (USDC), XRP, USD1, RLUSD and Zcash (ZEC) — would be able to verify that their holdings were backed at a minimum 1:1 ratio once the full proof-of-reserves data becomes available.
The latest disclosures are intended to strengthen confidence in the exchange's financial position and demonstrate that customer assets remain protected despite the unprecedented security breach. Photo by Jorge Franganillo, Wikimedia commons.
