How did the Binance hacker get away with stolen funds. Despite Tether and Circle freezing assets, the hacker moved funds. Can Binance recover funds or will they suspend withdrawals for longer
The crypto market witnesses one of the greatest hacks in crypto history in the last 24 hours. In detail, over $6 billion in funds was attacked on the most prominent crypto centralized exchange, Binance. The community response was immediate as both Tether and Circle moved to freeze billions in USDT and USDC. Yet, the hacker got away with around $3 billion. How did the Binance hacker get away with stolen funds?
Today, the price of BTC fell below the $79,000 price range while the price of ETH fell below the $2,200 price range. Both these dips caused a larger drop across the altcoin market as well. But what caused the main pioneer assets to fall? The entire market fell over the last 24 hours due to what is now being referred to as the greatest hack in crypto history, targeting the reputed centralized crypto exchange, Binance.
In detail, over $6 billion was targeted on Binance by hackers from North Korea. Intel from CNN confirms that this attack came from North Korean hackers using Chinese AI technology. Despite the sophistication of the attack, the crypto community retaliated in swift response, leading to Tether and Circle freezing billions in USDT and USDC, respectively $1.5 billion is USDT and $800 million in USDC.
https://twitter.com/cryptoblaney/status/2115964568342261955
As we can see from the post above, this expert goes on to highlight what makes the Binance hack an extremely clever one. In fact, the post goes on to state that the Binance hacker might have just pulled off one of the smartest moves in crypto. When the attack began, Tether froze $1.5 billion in USDT and Circle froze another $800 million in USDC. At that point, it looked like the hacker’s money was trapped.
Apparently, the hacker anticipated this move and went on to leverage DeFi protocols to get around it. So, instead of holding the stolen USDT in a wallet, he allegedly deposited it into Aave and used it as collateral to borrow ETH, leaving Aave holding frozen collateral, while the hacker is sitting on liquid ETH Unless the protocol can recover it somehow, the hacker may not even need to pay the loan back.
With withdrawal still suspended to prevent more losses, Binance users are patiently waiting to see when the exchange will resume operations. So far, Binance has promised to fully cover all user financial losses using its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and its own corporate reserves following the historic $6.3 billion security breach on October 30, 2026. But will this be enough? Withdrawals are expected to resume in 48 hours.
