Cryptocurrency exchange Binance sees spike in withdrawals after $6.3b heist by North Korean unit
Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, is back online after hackers the FBI links to North Korea stole billions from the platform.
Binance customers pulled $US3.64 billion ($A5.18 billion), or 2.1 per cent of its assets, as the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange went back online after hackers the FBI linked to North Korea stole billions from the platform.
Binance said withdrawals were stabilising after an initial spike and deposit volumes had remained “substantial”.
The exchange said it had now covered 95 per cent of the $US6.3 billion ($A9 billion) of stolen assets.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.The heist, which analysts believe may be the biggest financial robbery ever, adds to a string of recent crypto thefts.
Withdrawal levels are an early test of whether customers still trust the exchange with their money after the attack.
Attackers stole $US2.9 billion ($A4.1 billion) worth of cryptocurrency across nearly 150 incidents last year, according to researchers at TRM Labs.
Crypto analytics platform DefiLlama said on its dashboard that outflows were higher, at $US5.81 billion ($A8.27 billion), up from the $US4.36 billion ($A6.20 billion) it showed earlier. Binance did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the updated figures.
“This figure does not contain the flows we have deposited to our own new hot wallet, so they are not accurate. Our last update on X is closest to accurate (outstanding the moves in both deposits and withdrawals since it was posted),” a spokesperson for Binance said of the DefiLlama data.
Binance said the rollout for withdrawals would be carried out in phases, prioritising user demand. The first phase covered 15 tokens including bitcoin, ether and those involving some USDC and USDT stablecoins and dogecoin.
“We are taking a phased approach by prioritising tokens based on the past week data of user demand,” Binance said in an earlier article posted on X.
Binance said it had covered $US6 billion ($A8.5 billion) of stolen cryptocurrencies by using company money to buy replacement tokens. The remaining five per cent of stolen tokens consist of less liquid assets and may take longer to source in the required amounts, it said.
The FBI said on Saturday the North Korean state-sponsored unit known as TraderTraitor was responsible for the attack.
