Extra edition — In the late hours of Thursday, October 29, Binance — the world’s largest crypto exchange by volume — was hit by what may be the biggest crypto hack in history. Attackers drained an estimated $5.5 billion from the exchange’s hot wallets. We are covering this story live on kaupr.io/en throughout the day — in Norwegian, English, Swedish and Danish. Among the stories we are working on, and which will be published on kaupr.io first: how Binance has pledged to cover customer losses — and how the exchange’s SAFU reserve fund works.
What happened — and what we know
At least $5.57 billion drained from hot wallets on Ethereum, Arbitrum and Avalanche
Tether and Circle froze approximately $2.3 billion in stablecoins at the receiving address
Around 195,000 ETH already moved on — beyond reach of any freeze
BNB fell over 5%; Bitcoin dipped below $79,000
A full overview article is on its way. And a regular Kaupr Today edition will follow later today.
Here is what we have published so far:
Three of Binance’s hot wallets — Binance 14, Binance 16 and Hot Wallet 34 — were drained of ether, USDT and USDC within minutes on the evening of 29 October. Tether and Circle had frozen more than $2.3 billion on the receiving addresses by that same evening.
A signed authorization under the EIP-7702 standard let attackers install a contract they alone controlled. Of 50 authorizations sent in the same transaction, just one approval was enough — four minutes later, the wallet was empty.
As news of the hack spread, roughly $628 million in leveraged positions were automatically closed within an hour. Bitcoin slid to $77,771 by midnight UTC — ether, solana and BNB all hit fresh lows, and withdrawals of SOL and XRP from Binance remained paused.
Kaupr Today comes in two editions
Kaupr Daily — daily signals on onchain finance, every weekday.
Kaupr Digest — the week’s most important news in one read, every Sunday.
Wishing you a great morning — and welcome back later today for the regular Kaupr Daily.
Best regards
Morten Myrstad
Founder & Editor