Hackers stole 18,270 BTC from Binance, more than Tesla holds and more than twice El Salvador's reserve. TRM Labs attributes the attack to a North Korean group, while Binance says about $3 billion of the roughly $6.3 billion stolen has been frozen and withdrawals remain suspended.
Hackers took 18,270 BTC from Binance on Thursday, more than Tesla holds and more than twice the amount in El Salvador's national reserve. At $78,500 per coin, the haul is worth roughly $1.4 billion.
How the haul compares
Tesla holds 11,509 BTC. El Salvador's reserve wallets hold about 7,820 BTC, according to the National Bitcoin Office as of Friday. The stolen amount also comes within 442 BTC of SpaceX's 18,712 BTC, and both companies disclosed their holdings as of Sept. 30 in quarterly filings.
Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs attributed the attack "with high confidence" to TraderTraitor, a North Korean state-sponsored hacking unit. However, Binance has not identified the attacker.
Where the coins went
The bitcoin left Binance at about 4:20 p.m. ET on Thursday. A hot wallet sent the coins to a new address in 11 transactions, according to mempool.space records.
The receiving address then split the money among 19 addresses. Seventeen held exactly 1,000 BTC each, and none had spent its holdings as of 2:02 a.m. ET on Friday.
Freezes and Binance's response
Binance says approximately $3 billion of the roughly $6.3 billion stolen has been frozen onchain. Much of that protection comes from issuers of dollar-pegged stablecoin tokens such as Tether and Circle, whose tokens have controls that let the companies block transfers from particular addresses.
Binance said it had set aside more than $6.34 billion in company funds, including $5 billion already held in the cryptocurrencies affected by the theft. Withdrawals remained suspended during security checks, and the exchange planned to publish updated proof-of-reserves results on Monday, Nov. 2.
Source: CoinDesk
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