President Donald Trump said his administration is looking into the $6.3 billion Binance hack, as investigators examine whether North Korean hackers were behind the largest cryptocurrency thef
President Donald Trump said his administration is looking into the $6.3 billion Binance hack, as investigators examine whether North Korean hackers were behind the largest cryptocurrency theft on record.
Speaking to CBS News correspondent Jennifer Jacobs in the Oval Office on Oct. 30, Trump said authorities had not determined whether North Korea was responsible but were investigating.
Asked whether the stolen funds would be recovered, Trump said “they said they're going to get it back” and described the situation as “under control.”
Watch Mehab Qureshi, senior editor at TheStreet, decode the Binance hack:
How did hackers drain $6.3 billion from Binance in about 20 minutes (3:39)Binance said late Thursday that about $6.3 billion in crypto was drained from its wallets in roughly 20 minutes, the largest theft the industry has ever recorded.
Around $3 billion of the stolen assets has since been frozen with help from stablecoin issuers like Tether and Circle, along with other exchanges.
The exchange says no customer funds were touched and that the loss was limited to its own corporate holdings. It has set aside $5 billion to cover the damage and is buying another $1.34 billion in tokens on public markets, while withdrawals remain paused.
"Your assets are safe," Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said in a video statement Friday morning, adding that the company never uses customer funds.
Blockchain investigators TRM Labs and independent sleuth ZachXBT say the attack bears the fingerprints of TraderTraitor, a North Korea-linked hacking crew blamed for last year's $1.5 billion Bybit heist.
No government has formally named a culprit, though the U.S. Secret Service says it is working with Circle and federal prosecutors to trace and recover the funds.
Trump's comment comes a year after he granted Binance founder Changpeng "CZ" Zhao a full and unconditional pardon in October 2025.
Zhao had pleaded guilty in 2023 to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program at Binance, stepping down as CEO and serving a four-month prison sentence, while the exchange paid $4.3 billion in penalties.
The White House said at the time that Zhao had been prosecuted as part of the Biden administration's "war on cryptocurrency."
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