The FBI stated that North Korean hackers stole more than $6 billion in assets from Binance, making it the largest theft in crypto history. Nearly half of the funds have now been frozen, mainly by the companies behind two major stablecoins.
Custodia Bank CEO Caitlin Long believes this incident will change the crypto industry on two levels: hacker attacks are beginning to take on geopolitical attributes; regulators may want to write freeze rules directly into the tokens themselves.
1. Crypto Hacker Attacks Now Carry Geopolitical Leverage
The FBI attributed the October 29 attack to its North Korean state hacker team codenamed "TraderTraitor" and asked crypto companies to block any funds associated with the hackers. In public information, the FBI stated that North Korea is responsible for stealing more than $6 billion in virtual assets from crypto exchange Binance around October 29, 2026.
Long wrote that this attack "will inevitably have significant geopolitical implications." She cited a letter from a U.S. senator noting that in 2023 a White House cybersecurity official said such thefts funded about half of North Korea's missile programs.
The amount stolen from Binance this time is more than four times the previous record—Bybit's $1.46 billion loss in 2025.
Long called this attack "on another order of magnitude" and mentioned that crypto tracing firm Chainalysis was also breached during the same period. She believes this was intended to slow down the freezing process, but this claim has not yet been confirmed.
2. Freeze Rules May Be Written Into Stablecoins Themselves
Currently, freezing stablecoins—crypto tokens pegged to the U.S. dollar—is a discretionary decision by the issuing companies. According to Elliptic data, Tether froze 1.18 billion USDT 37 minutes after the stolen tokens arrived; Circle froze 823 million USDC three minutes later.
Long expects regulators will want to build this power into the token code itself. She said: "This will have regulatory implications—U.S. regulators will want to build compliance directly into the smart contracts of stablecoins themselves, rather than doing 'after-the-fact remediation' off-chain as is currently the case."
Hackers have already found ways to bypass the "freeze button." Chainalysis observed that they deposited stablecoins into a lending pool on Tron and exchanged them for receipt tokens that no company can freeze.
Code also has boundaries. According to Elliptic estimates, about $3.21 billion of the stolen funds are held in Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), and other tokens that no one can freeze.
The U.S. Senate Banking Committee stated that the GENIUS Act introduced in 2025 already requires issuers to have built-in freezing capabilities.
Binance stated it has covered 95% of the stolen tokens and plans to open withdrawals for 15 cryptocurrencies on November 1. Co-founder Yi He posted about the matter, and Binance founder and former CEO CZ confirmed that withdrawals are now open, with BTC withdrawals now available.
