Binance has allocated $6.34bn to cover losses from the hack on the exchange, with industry partners freezing a further $3bn in affected assets, according to The Block. The figure comes from the company itself, and we could not find its original statement, so this rests on the aggregator’s write-up rather than anything audited.
The scale of the theft is easier to verify, because it happened on a public ledger. CoinDesk counts 18,270 bitcoin taken, worth around $1.4bn, more than Tesla holds and over twice El Salvador’s national reserve. investigators have linked the attack to North Korea.
Cointelegraph reported that the attackers raced to convert stolen into assets nobody can switch off. Issuers such as Tether and Circle can blacklist an address and lock their in place, which is what the $3bn freeze refers to. Bitcoin has no equivalent mechanism, so whatever reached it stayed gone.
Nothing has been reported missing from customer balances, and Binance says it can absorb the hit without touching them. That is a company’s assurance rather than a verified reserve, and the thing that would turn it into evidence is a proof-of-reserves attestation or a filing showing where the $6.34bn sits. If you keep coins on any exchange, the practical point is unchanged: your balance is a claim on the company, not a holding you control. Our guide to self-custody covers what the alternative involves, including the parts that are harder than they sound.
