Binance Restores Withdrawals Across 15 Networks After Hack

Binance begins to come out of the crisis. On Sunday, November 1, the platform reactivated withdrawals on the Bitcoin network, the first network to return to normal operation since the suspension on October 29. At the same time, it announces having replenished 95% of the stolen assets. An encouraging figure, although customers will still have to wait to recover certain funds.

Bitcoin leads the way, 14 other networks follow

After several days of suspension following the hacking, Binance began restoring crypto withdrawals. The Bitcoin network was the first to return to normal operation this Sunday, November 1, with withdrawals resuming between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. UTC. Changpeng Zhao confirmed the news on X in a few words: “BTC withdrawal is live.” 

The first reopening phase covers 15 networks, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Smart Chain, Tron, Solana, XRP Ledger, Zcash, Dogecoin, Polygon, Avalanche C-Chain, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism, TON, and Sui.

However, be careful, the list of networks does not mean that all assets are immediately available. On Ethereum, for example, Binance allows withdrawals of ETH, USDT, and USDC. On Arbitrum, users can also withdraw their ETH, USDT, USDC, and ARB.

Why some customers still have to wait

To organize this resumption, Binance ranked the reopenings according to withdrawal requests recorded the previous week. The platform then checks each combination between an asset and its network.

Result: seeing your network on the first list does not guarantee immediate withdrawal of your cryptos.

As for the second phase, it remains without a precise schedule. Yi He explains that wallets still concerned are subject to additional checks. Binance will prioritize the most capitalized assets, those representing the largest amounts for its clients, and the tokens used by the greatest number.

Note that deposits were never interrupted. Binance had only suspended withdrawals.

95% of assets replenished, but the final effort remains to be made

The progress is rapid on paper. Binance initially announced 80% of funds replenished, then 90% on October 31. On November 1, Richard Teng raised this estimate to 95%, while reaffirming that the platform would bear the losses.

On a bill estimated at 6.3 billion dollars, this represents about 6 billion dollars replenished. Binance had already announced mobilizing more than 6.34 billion dollars of own resources.

The remaining 5% mainly concerns less liquid cryptos, outside of the ten assets the platform claims to fully cover: BTC, ETH, USDT, BNB, SOL, USDC, XRP, USD1, RLUSD, and ZEC. Binance explains it needs more time to buy back the missing quantities.

To finance this operation, the company draws from three reserves: the SAFU fund, the excess from the futures contract insurance fund, and its own treasury. It also plans to bring SAFU to about one billion dollars.

A first snapshot of the reserves dates from October 31 at 0 UTC. However, the full cryptographic verification, based on zero-knowledge proof technology, will only be available on November 3.

The North Korean trail now confirmed

For its part, the FBI officially attributed the hacking to North Korea on October 31. The agency also identified the operation under the name TraderTraitor, as reported in our previous article on the North Korean trail.

With the Secret Service and IRS-CI, the FBI indicates that the hackers mainly convert the funds into ether. It also asks node operators and DeFi services to block identified addresses.

The coming days will therefore be decisive for Binance. The verification of reserves, expected Tuesday, will juxtapose announcements with cryptographic proofs. Then, the second phase of withdrawals will need to reassure clients who are still waiting for their assets.