Binance begins restoring withdrawals after $6.3 billion hack

Binance has begun restoring cryptocurrency withdrawals, bringing them back in phases after freezing deposits and withdrawals across the exchange following a hack that drained $6.3 billion worth of crypto from its wallets. The exchange said Sunday that 95% of the stolen funds have now been recovered or replaced, with the rest — harder to source at the scale required — still being pursued. Binance said it will absorb the financial hit itself rather than pass the losses on to users.

The company said the freeze was not a decision it made lightly, calling it a necessary precaution while its teams worked to contain the breach, assess the damage, restore services, and run security checks. The withdrawal restart varies by network and asset: as of Sunday morning, Bitcoin withdrawals and deposits remained partially suspended, while Ethereum deposits were back to normal even as its withdrawals stayed partially suspended. Binance warned users to expect temporary delays or slower processing due to higher traffic, and said it would publish a fuller incident report once its investigation wraps up.

Binance had already pointed to North Korean hackers for the breach, and on Saturday the FBI identified the group behind it as TraderTraitor, saying it was channeling the stolen funds mostly into Ethereum, likely followed by more laundering.

Why it matters

Binance’s pledge to absorb the full $6.3 billion loss itself, rather than pass it to users, is a test of whether an exchange can keep customer trust after a breach now attributed to a state-linked hacking group.