Binance absorbs $6.3 billion loss from North Korean hackers

North Korean hackers stole an estimated $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency from Binance's 'Binance 14' hot wallet, marking the largest confirmed heist in history. The attackers compromised a DevOps engineer's laptop and utilized the EIP 7702 multi-signature protocol to bypass standard approval controls for on-chain execution. A self-destruct mechanism was employed to erase traces of the intrusion. Tether and other entities have frozen approximately $2 billion in USDT and USDC stablecoins, which may allow for partial recovery. Binance co-CEO Richard Tang confirmed that the exchange will cover all losses using company funds, noting that most user assets are stored in cold wallets. Tang stated, "Rest assured that we are working non-stop to resolve this, to make the users whole and live up to your trust." The exchange is rebuilding its withdrawal service, targeting a restart within 40 hours, and plans to publish a proof of reserves on Monday. Binance is collaborating with law enforcement and blockchain intelligence firms to trace the remaining funds. Despite the scale of the theft, Bitcoin showed relative resilience, dropping from approximately $81,000 to a low of $76,000, a decline of roughly 6%. Analysts noted that the 50-week moving average and bull market support bands held. Market commentators argued that the modest price drop indicates strength, distinguishing this theft from the FTX collapse, where over $8 billion in customer deposits were lost to fraud. Unlike FTX, the Binance incident involves funds that are being actively chased and partially frozen rather than immediately liquidated.