Binance Names Justin Yek CFO as Exchange Rebuilds After $6.3 Billion Hack

Binance has named Justin Yek, a former VP of finance at payments firm Airwallex, as its new chief financial officer, the company announced Saturday. He succeeds Kaiser Ng, who held the post since 2022 and is stepping down to pursue a new venture.

The change at the top of the finance function comes less than two weeks after hackers drained an estimated $6.3 billion from the platform on Oct. 29, in what Fortune's Jeff John Roberts described as the biggest heist in crypto history. Binance later attributed the attack to North Korean hackers who used social engineering and malicious software to compromise engineers and access systems that enabled unauthorized withdrawals.

What do we know about the hack's fallout?

The damage was partly contained. Tether and Circle froze roughly $2.5 billion in stolen stablecoins. Binance says it has replenished 98% of the stolen coins through reserve funds and other sources, and that users won't bear the losses.

The money, though, is only part of the problem. The incident raises questions that sit squarely in the CFO's remit rather than the IT department's: how strong are Binance's internal controls, and how does the exchange convince customers and regulators that their assets are safe?

Who is Justin Yek?

Yek's résumé fits a scaling global fintech more than a crisis-era crypto exchange:

• At Airwallex, he rose from head of strategic finance and corporate development to VP of finance, leading the global finance team.
• Before that, he spent about nine years in investment banking at Citi and Morgan Stanley.
• He worked on more than $30 billion in equity, M&A and debt transactions, according to his LinkedIn profile.

That's substantial corporate finance and dealmaking experience. But the CFO title is new to Yek, and he lacks the crypto-exchange background of his predecessor. Ng joined Binance from Kraken.

Binance co-founder and co-CEO Yi He said in a statement that the transition plan had been "implemented over the last half year," meaning the handover was in motion well before the October breach — but Yek inherits its consequences regardless.

Why is this a finance problem, not just a security problem?

Cybersecurity has shifted from an IT concern to a core finance issue. The financial consequences of a breach — lost assets, customer remediation, regulatory scrutiny and reputational damage — ultimately land on the CFO's desk.

The concern is now shared across corporate finance. Deloitte's Q3 2026 CFO Signals survey found cybersecurity was the top external concern for finance chiefs, cited by 50% of respondents, ahead of the economy and inflation.

For Binance specifically, the stakes are higher than most. The exchange absorbed an estimated $6.3 billion in losses, backstopped customers with reserve funds, and now faces regulators and users asking whether its control environment can prevent a repeat. Restoring that trust, not rebuilding the balance sheet, will be the first real test of Yek's tenure.