Binance’s $6.3B breach has DEXs getting a bigger spotlight — but the market isn’t celebrating yet 🧪

Binance said a hack involving a compromised engineer’s laptop resulted in $6.3 billion in losses, according to a live update, as Geoffrey Kendrick of Standard Chartered said the breach could accelerate the shift from centralized exchanges to decentralized exchanges over the longer term.

“The decentralized exchange (DEX) has never had any exploits, and the hack of the largest centralized exchange (CEX), in Binance, should see the ratio of DEX to CEX trading continue to increase,” said Kendrick, Standard Chartered’s global head of digital assets research. “I would encourage investors to re-engage with Uniswap.” He added that investors should wait until the impact of the Binance attack has time to play out in the markets.

CoinGecko research shows the top 10 spot DEX-to-CEX ratio reached 23.5% in the second quarter of 2026, up 2.1 percentage points from the first quarter of 2026. Kendrick retains his $100 price target for Uniswap (UNI) for 2030, saying the Binance hack is “another reason why that forecast may end up being too low.” Standard Chartered’s earlier thesis projected that assets locked in DeFi could reach $2.7 trillion by 2030, with Uniswap emerging as a key trading venue for tokenized assets.

Cryptocurrency markets extended their decline early Friday following the Binance hack, with BNB down more than 8% over 24 hours and Bitcoin ($BTC) trading near $77,000, Cointelegraph reported. Decentralized finance tokens also declined: Aave’s AAVE fell 11.3% to $118.54, while Uniswap’s UNI dropped 10.4% to $6.48, according to CoinGecko.

Kendrick expects further negative price action in the near term. “Only after assets are unfrozen and more detail of the hack emerges will we find a new base,” he said.