Binance’s $6.3B Vault Got Gutted, but $BTC and Its Stock Proxies Still Stand

The roughly $6.3 billion Binance hack, the largest in cryptocurrency history, has prompted Wall Street firms to characterize crypto-linked equities as resilient exposure rather than grounds for panic. The breach, which occurred on October 29, exposed weaknesses in the exchange’s security without derailing Bitcoin’s broader recovery, with Cantor Fitzgerald, TD Cowen, and Compass Point highlighting that Bitcoin and companies holding it were trading near depressed levels.

Cantor Fitzgerald’s Ramsey El-Assal said rapid containment limited the damage as stablecoin issuers and others froze roughly $3 billion of stolen funds, including more than $1.5 billion by Tether, about $800 million by Circle, and around $200 million by Ripple. “We would be buyers on weakness,” he wrote, adding that while the episode is painful, “this is not 2022.” TD Cowen’s Lance Vitanza likewise said the incident exposed vulnerabilities in Binance’s own security rather than Bitcoin’s underlying technology. Compass Point’s Ed Engel and Michael Donovan said Binance has “more than enough liquidity to cover the hole,” while also flagging potential pressure on stablecoin supply and possible business gains for Coinbase and Hyperliquid. The firms are watching the $75,000 to $77,000 Bitcoin range as a key level, while Cantor expects shares of Coinbase, Robinhood, and Strategy to recover as sentiment stabilizes.

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. Crypto researcher Ash Crypto also argued that a 20% drop is normal during a Bitcoin bull market, while on-chain analyst Willy Woo noted that Bitcoin closed the week following the hack down only 2.9%, compared with gold’s 3% decline. Bitcoin posted its 7th straight weekly close above the 50-week moving average, trading at $78,307 and about 3.6% above the average near $75,602.

Market conditions appeared to remain orderly after Binance resumed withdrawals in phases at 6:00 a.m. UTC on November 1. OKX recorded about $445 million in 24-hour net inflows, the largest among tracked exchanges, followed by Bybit with $112 million, Gate with $91 million, and Bitget with $54 million. Binance registered more than $7 billion in net outflows, up from $5.8 billion earlier Monday, despite holding about $127.9 billion in wallets tracked by DefiLlama, more than four times OKX’s $29 billion. By Sunday, Binance said it had replenished approximately 95% of affected assets, up from 90% on Saturday, with the remaining 5% consisting of less liquid tokens. The exchange is using its corporate treasury, a partial deployment of its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), and part of its futures insurance fund to replace stolen assets, separate from the about $3 billion frozen by industry partners.

Binance has set aside $6.34 billion to cover losses, said user assets are safe, and pledged to absorb the losses without passing them on to customers. 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 vice president of digital assets 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.” US spot Bitcoin ETFs still recorded $643.33 million in outflows on October 30, while Glassnode placed the average cost basis of US spot ETF holders near $82,308.