Binance Commits $6.34 Billion to Cover Losses From October 29 Hack

Binance has committed more than $6.34 billion to cover losses from the October 29 attack on the exchange, and it says the recovery of affected cryptocurrency assets is now complete. The company disclosed the figure alongside a new proof-of-reserves record covering 198 tokens, and it is reopening user withdrawals on a gradual basis.

The announcement is the most detailed accounting Binance has given since the breach. It also answers the question users have asked since the attack: who ultimately pays when an exchange is drained. In Binance's case, the answer is a combination of the company's own balance sheet and two internal insurance-style mechanisms.

Where the $6.34 billion came from

According to the exchange, it repurchased the tokens users lost after the attack through two channels: open-market purchases and over-the-counter (OTC) transactions. That mix matters operationally. Open-market buying on liquid venues absorbs available supply, while OTC blocks let the exchange acquire large positions without moving public order books.

Binance says it funded the repurchases from three sources:

• Company funds
• A portion of the Secured Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), its long-standing emergency insurance reserve
• Resources allocated from the futures insurance fund

The exchange added a qualification on the third source. The amount transferred from the futures insurance fund, it said, came only from the portion of that fund exceeding the company's required risk-management level. In other words, Binance argues the transfer leaves the futures safety buffer at, not below, its mandated threshold.

A new reserve record for 198 tokens

Alongside the recovery announcement, Binance released an updated reserve record covering 198 tokens. The record is the exchange's latest snapshot of the assets it holds against user balances, and its publication at this moment is clearly deliberate. After a hack of this scale, the burden of proof sits with the exchange, and a fresh attestation covering nearly 200 assets is Binance's attempt to meet that burden.

The timing of the reserve release also serves a practical function for counterparties and institutional clients, who typically re-verify custodial exposure after any security incident before resuming large-volume flows.

Withdrawals reopen gradually

Binance said withdrawals are being reopened step by step rather than all at once. That is a standard operational posture after a major incident. A phased reopening lets risk and engineering teams monitor for anomalies — unusual outflows, replayed transactions, or residual vulnerabilities — before full throughput resumes.

What does this change for the industry's larger insurance debate? The episode is now a live case study in how far an exchange's internal reserves can stretch. SAFU was designed for exactly this scenario, and the futures insurance fund's excess capital was tapped as a supplementary buffer — a structure other exchanges may study, and possibly copy, as they review their own coverage arrangements.

Binance has not indicated a fixed date for the full resumption of withdrawals, so the phased reopening and the completeness of the recovery remain the operational details to watch in the coming weeks.