$6.3B Hack, $BTC Bull Run: The Bear Market Just Got Hacked

Bitcoin held its ground after the October 29 Binance hack drained about $6.3 billion from 10 blockchains, with the largest cryptocurrency theft yet prompting only a 2.9% weekly decline in $BTC. Binance pledged to cover all losses and began phased withdrawals on November 1, while $BTC traded at $78,307, up 0.65% over 24 hours at press time, according to BeInCrypto Markets. Gold fell 3% over the same period, according to Willy Woo, who contrasted the decline with Bitcoin’s 25% drop during the FTX collapse in the 2022 bear market and declared, “BTC is in a bull market.”

Binance restored withdrawals in phases at 6:00 a.m. UTC on Sunday and said it had replenished approximately 95% of affected assets, up from 90% on Saturday. The remaining 5% consisted of less liquid tokens bought through market and over-the-counter transactions. The exchange is using its corporate treasury, part of its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and a portion of its futures insurance fund, and set aside $6.34 billion to cover losses. About $3 billion in stolen assets frozen by industry partners is separate from those replacement funds, including more than $1.5 billion frozen by Tether, about $800 million by Circle and around $200 million by Ripple. Binance also published a new reserves snapshot and said an updated proof-of-reserves report was expected Monday.

Despite recording the largest net outflows among tracked exchanges, with more than $7 billion leaving Binance, up from $5.8 billion earlier Monday, the exchange still held about $127.9 billion in wallets tracked by DefiLlama, more than four times OKX’s $29 billion. OKX registered about $445 million in 24-hour net inflows, followed by Bybit with $112 million, Gate with $91 million and Bitget with $54 million. OKX’s OKB token rose about 1.4% over the past 24 hours to trade near $113 on Monday, while BNB gained 0.3% to about $708, according to CoinMarketCap.

Wall Street firms nevertheless described the selloff, which sent Bitcoin sliding toward $77,000, as an opportunity to buy crypto-linked equities. Cantor Fitzgerald’s Ramsey El-Assal said stablecoin issuers and others moved quickly to contain the damage, writing, “We would be buyers on weakness” and adding that while the episode was painful, “this is not 2022.” TD Cowen’s Lance Vitanenza said the breach exposed weaknesses in Binance’s security rather than Bitcoin’s underlying technology, while Compass Point’s Ed Engel and Michael Donovan said Binance had “more than enough liquidity to cover the hole.” The firms are watching the $75,000 to $77,000 Bitcoin range, with Cantor expecting shares of Coinbase, Robinhood and Strategy to recover once panic faded.

OneKey founder and CEO Yishi Wang warned that North Korean threat actors could target BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT), which held 815K $BTC worth nearly $63 billion and uses Coinbase as its sole custodian. The Secret Service and FBI have opened a probe, while TRM and Chainalysis linked the hack to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group. Moody’s Ratings’ Cristiano Ventricelli said the incident “underscores the heightened cybersecurity risks associated with hot wallets” and “illustrates the risk concentration inherent in large, centralized intermediaries,” adding that its broader implications depend on “the ultimate losses, affected counterparties, asset recovery, and importantly, whether the incident leads to wider disruption or loss of confidence.”

Technical and fund-flow data offered mixed signals. Bitcoin posted its seventh consecutive weekly close above the 50-week moving average and was about 3.6% above that level, which stood near $75,602. Alex Thorn of Galaxy said reclaiming the average had historically confirmed that bear-market lows were “in.” Bitcoin gained about 43% across July, August and September before closing October down 7.32%, its first monthly loss since June, though PlanB’s 14-month relative strength index remained above 50 for a third straight month. US spot Bitcoin ETFs lost $643.33 million on October 30, erasing four days of inflows and leaving the week about $202 million negative, while Glassnode placed the average cost basis of US spot ETF holders near $82,308. DonAlt, who predicted the 700% $XRP rally in 2024, cited the market’s response to the hack to explain why it was “hard to be a bear” in the current setup.