Binance has issued its first official statement on the suspected Binance hack that drained about $3.3 billion from its hot wallets, and the most telling part is not what the post says now but
Update: Binance Halts Withdrawals After Suspected Hack, Says Funds ‘Remain Safe’. Read the latest on the Binance hack.
Binance has issued its first official statement on the suspected Binance hack that drained about $3.3 billion from its hot wallets, and the most telling part is not what the post says now but how it got there. FinanceFeeds reviewed the post's edit history on X: in 13 minutes, Binance's wording on customer money moved from "not confirmed" to "completely safe," while the exchange still has not used the word "hack."
The change matters because it is the only official Binance position on record. Founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the exchange, called the incident a hack before Binance said anything at all.
The @binance post first went up at 21:16 UTC on 29 October. It read: "Our teams are aware of reports of a potential security issue and are actively investigating. At this stage, we have not confirmed any impact to user funds."
At 21:24 UTC, Binance edited the post and dropped the sentence about user funds entirely. At 21:29 UTC it edited again, adding: "User funds are completely safe." The rest of the text stayed the same: security teams are "reviewing all relevant information with urgency," updates will come "through official Binance channels as soon as we have verified information," and users should ignore "unofficial links, messages, or requests for account information."
The first version is still the one quoted in early coverage. Decrypt cites the "not confirmed any impact" line, so readers now see two different Binance positions depending on which outlet they open.
Zhao posted at 21:15 UTC, one minute before Binance's original statement: "User funds are safe! It does look like a hack on Binance." He added that he does not manage Binance.com anymore but, "as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered."
Binance's final wording lines up with Zhao's "safe" message, but it stops short of his diagnosis. The exchange has not confirmed a breach, a loss figure or the cause. It has also not said whether the SAFU emergency fund will be used. Binance finished converting that $1 billion reserve into Bitcoin in February.
The stablecoin issuers have said more than the exchange. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire wrote on X: "In coordination with law enforcement, we have frozen more than 800M USDC associated with the incident and will continue supporting the investigation." Zhao thanked Tether for a freeze of about $971 million and Circle for about $823 million.
Allaire's post is the first public sign that law enforcement is involved, although no agency has spoken. It also carries a commercial twist: Binance made a $100 million strategic investment in Circle in September, so the exchange's own partner froze funds taken from Binance wallets. Circle has frozen exchange-linked hot wallets before, and this case tests how fast it acts when a partner is the victim.
Estimates of the outflow keep rising. Decrypt's on-chain tally puts the total at at least $5.57 billion across Ethereum, Bitcoin and Tron, including $3.51 billion on Ethereum and 18,270 BTC. Against that, roughly $1.8 billion is frozen. BNB was trading at $703.10 at 22:07 UTC, down 6.9% in 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.
For brokers and platforms that route client flow through Binance, the edit history is the practical takeaway. A statement that changed twice in 13 minutes is a holding line, not a disclosure. Treat it that way until Binance publishes figures.
Three questions will decide how the market reads the next update: whether Binance calls it a hack, whether it gives a loss figure, and whether SAFU or the balance sheet covers it. In February 2025, Bybit confirmed its $1.5 billion breach within hours and published reserve figures soon after. That speed helped steady withdrawals, but the exchange has still recovered only $48.4 million of the stolen funds. If Binance's next update repeats "investigating," expect the gap between Zhao's account and the exchange's own to widen. Pressure for a regulator to step in will grow with it.
FinanceFeeds is tracking official Binance and government statements and will update this coverage as verified information arrives. For how exchange-level protection actually works, see our guide to what Binance, Coinbase and Kraken actually guarantee.
