Binance sees billions in net withdrawals as services reopen after hack

Reuters reported on 2 November that Binance customers had withdrawn a net $4.72 billion since withdrawals began reopening on 1 November. Binance said that represented about 3% of the assets on its platform and that withdrawal volumes were stabilising after an initial spike.

The exchange had suspended withdrawals following the 29 October attack, which Binance estimated affected about $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency. It has promised to cover the losses and said it had replenished approximately 95% of the affected assets by 1 November. Replacing assets is not the same as recovering the stolen cryptocurrency.

A separate estimate based on data from analytics platform DefiLlama put the outflow at $4.9 billion. Dutch news agency ANP reported that the Financial Times had cited the figure for withdrawals on the morning of 2 November; SBS News described $4.9 billion as a net outflow since withdrawals resumed.

CoinDesk notes that DefiLlama tracks publicly visible movements from Binance-linked wallets, which can include transfers between wallets controlled by the exchange. Such movements are therefore not necessarily all customer withdrawals.

In the first nine and a half hours after reopening, Binance said it processed $4.65 billion in withdrawals and $1.01 billion in deposits, a net outflow of $3.64 billion. For comparison, Reuters reported that Binance processed about $6 billion in net outflows over 72 hours after the collapse of rival exchange FTX in 2022.

The phased reopening continued on 3 November, when Binance restored withdrawals for 31 additional assets on Ethereum and 20 on Solana, according to crypto.news. The exchange said remaining assets and networks would be restored after security checks.