Binance Restarts Withdrawals After $6.3 Billion Crypto Theft

Binance started reopening withdrawals on Sunday in stages, days after attackers took $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency from its wallets, according to TechCrunch. The exchange had halted all deposits and withdrawals once the theft was detected.

In its newest statement, Binance said it has already replaced 95% of the assets that were taken. The company is still sourcing what it described as the remaining affected assets, which it said are harder to buy in large amounts because they trade thinly. Binance also said customers will not carry the cost of the incident and that it will absorb the loss itself.

The company said shutting off withdrawals was not a choice it made casually, noting that dependable access matters greatly to its users. It called the freeze a required safeguard while staff worked to limit the damage, measure the fallout, bring services back and finish security reviews.

Withdrawals are coming back gradually, with timing set by network and asset. On Sunday morning, Binance's network status page listed a mixture of states. Bitcoin deposits and withdrawals were both still partly suspended, while Ethereum deposits were running normally and Ethereum withdrawals were only partly suspended.

Binance warned customers to expect slower processing or short delays because of heavy traffic. It described the restart as an important step but said more work lies ahead, including tighter protections and further updates as recovery moves forward.

The exchange later reported that during the first hours of reopened service it handled $4.6 billion in outgoing transfers and $1.0 billion in incoming ones, a net outflow of $3.6 billion. That figure equals 2.1% of the assets it manages. Binance said a fuller account of the incident will be released once its investigation wraps up.

Binance had earlier pointed to North Korean hackers. On Saturday, the FBI attributed the breach to a North Korean group called TraderTraitor, saying it is mostly swapping the stolen assets into Ethereum and is likely to keep laundering them.