Binance net outflows hit $3.64 billion as withdrawals reopen
Binance customers pulled a net $3.64 billion in the first nine and a half hours after withdrawals restarted on Sunday, about 2.1% of the exchange's assets, as it said it had now covered 95% of the stolen funds.
The first real test of trust after the largest crypto theft on record has a number attached. Binance net outflows came to about $3.64 billion during the opening hours of Sunday's restart, the exchange said, a large sum in dollars but a small slice of the customer assets it holds.
What happened
Between 06:00 and 15:30 UTC on November 1, Binance processed $4.649 billion of withdrawals against $1.01 billion of deposits, according to a post on X quoted by the BBC and CNBC. The gap equals roughly 2.1% of the $171 billion in total assets shown in its proof-of-reserves data as of October 28.
The exchange said withdrawals spiked at first and then eased, while deposits stayed substantial. By 12:36 UTC all 15 networks and assets in the first phase were live again, CNBC reported, and testing continued on the rest. Cointelegraph said early data showed the biggest share of withdrawals came in USDT, followed by USDC and bitcoin.
Third-party trackers saw a larger figure. DefiLlama data cited by Cointelegraph showed $5.8 billion leaving over a rolling 24-hour window. Binance disputed that reading, saying it missed transfers into a new hot wallet, according to a Reuters account summarised by Bullquill.
Binance also said it had now covered about 95% of the $6.3 billion taken in the attack, up from 90% a day earlier. The last 5% sits in thinner tokens, which the exchange says will take longer to source in size.
Why it matters
A run that stops at about 2% looks very different from the bank-style collapses crypto has seen before. Founder Changpeng Zhao wrote on X that "98% choose to stay" and said most of the outflow came in the first couple of hours, CNBC reported. Our coverage of the phased withdrawal restart laid out which assets opened first; the flow data is the first hard evidence of how users reacted.
Stablecoin issuers are part of the defence. Circle told CNBC it has frozen more than $1.1 billion in USDC linked to the incident, up from the $800 million figure its chief executive gave on Friday. That builds on the early action described in our Circle and Tether freeze report.
The size of the gap between Binance's own count and DefiLlama's also matters. Investors who watch on-chain dashboards will keep seeing alarming numbers if wallet labels lag behind the exchange's new infrastructure, so the two sets of figures may diverge for days.
The bill is real even without a run. The BBC noted that Binance used its corporate treasury plus its futures insurance and emergency reserve funds to replace customer assets, and has said it will absorb the whole loss.
Seen against the $171 billion in reported assets, Binance net outflows of $3.64 billion look manageable; the open question is whether the pace holds once every network is back online.
What's next
The next checkpoints are the remaining networks still in testing and the last 5% of unreplaced tokens. CNBC's report on the first-day flows has the exchange's full statement.
If Binance net outflows keep shrinking as more assets reopen, the episode may be remembered for its resilience rather than the theft itself. A second wave of withdrawals, or a fresh pause, would quickly change that reading.
Investigators are still tracing the stolen coins, which the FBI ties to North Korea's TraderTraitor group.
This article is for information only and is not investment advice.