Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author｜jk
On the evening of October 29 (starting at 20:24 UTC, around 4 a.m. Beijing time on October 30), multiple Binance hot wallets were suspected of being attacked, transferring billions of dollars in assets to newly created addresses within a short period of time, and Etherscan subsequently flagged the relevant addresses as "Binance Hot Wallet Hacker." Binance officially stated that user funds are safe and that the team is investigating potential security issues. Meanwhile, Tether and Circle have frozen at least 2.316 billion USD worth of stablecoins, BTC briefly fell below $79,000, and liquidations across the entire network reached $628 million within one hour.
Earlier the same day, prediction market Polymarket suspended new trading for a time after a third-party service provider was breached, and promised full compensation to affected users.
How the Incident Unfolded
On-chain data shows that the first anomalous transfer occurred at 20:24 UTC: a wallet labeled Binance 14 transferred 167,464 ETH (valued by Etherscan at approximately $388 million) to a newly created address, while also transferring dozens of other tokens including approximately $1.6 billion in USDT. 24 seconds later, Binance 16 transferred approximately 28,000 ETH to the same address. At about 20:41, a wallet labeled Binance Hot Wallet 34 transferred 780 million USDC to the same recipient, and at 20:59 transferred another 43 million USDC.
The wallets that initiated these transactions had previously received gas funding of only three transfers of approximately 0.1 ETH each, solely through Tornado Cash. Some reports noted that Binance had scheduled Ethereum wallet maintenance on October 28, but there is no evidence yet as to whether this is related to the current outflows.
Scale of Losses: Total Outflows of Approximately $5.6 Billion, Binance Has Not Yet Disclosed Figures
As of press time, outflows associated with wallets labeled as Binance amount to approximately $5.643 billion, of which $3.528 billion was on the Ethereum network, $1.449 billion in Bitcoin, $628 million on Tron, and $38 million combined across the Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base networks.
It should be noted that "outflow" does not equal "theft": Binance has not yet confirmed which transfers were caused by the attack, nor has it stated whether the frozen portion can be recovered.
As of press time, Binance has not disclosed the total amount.
Stablecoin Freezes: At Least $2.316 Billion Locked
Within about one hour after the incident, Tether and Circle took action in succession. The freeze scale initially disclosed by CZ was approximately $971 million for Tether and approximately $823 million for Circle, totaling approximately $1.794 billion. Subsequently, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino stated that more than 1.567 billion USDT had been frozen.
According to on-chain monitoring cited by Odaily Planet Daily, Tether and Circle have frozen at least 2.316 billion USD worth of stablecoins.
However, stablecoin issuers can only freeze tokens they themselves issue. Approximately 195,000 ETH (about $450 million) in the receiving address, as well as approximately 16,700 BTC that left Binance wallets, are outside the scope of the freeze.
At 05:33 Beijing time, Binance updated its statement saying that user funds are completely safe, the team has noticed reports of potential security issues and is actively investigating, and the security team is urgently reviewing all relevant information and will publish updates through official channels after verification. As of press time, Binance has still not publicly confirmed the nature of the incident, nor has it disclosed the attack method, the amount of losses, or compensation arrangements.
Market Reaction: $628 Million Liquidated in One Hour, Longs Account for 97%
Coinglass data shows that within one hour, contract liquidations across the entire network reached $627.7 million, of which longs accounted for $606.6 million, and shorts about $21 million. BTC liquidations were $189 million, ETH liquidations $157 million, and SOL liquidations $46.8 million; over the past 24 hours, total liquidations across the entire network amounted to approximately $953 million.
Price conditions of major cryptocurrencies, source: Coingecko
In terms of prices, BTC fell below 79,000 USDT, quoted at 78,974.5 USDT, a 24-hour decline of 2.59%; ETH fell below $2,240. BTC and ETH fell by more than about 3% and 4% respectively within one hour after the incident; as of press time, BNB was quoted at $703.28, a 24-hour decline of 6.3%.
Polymarket: Third-Party Service Provider Breached, Trading Suspended for About One Hour
According to Polymarket's status page, at 2:05 a.m. Beijing time on October 30, the platform entered cancel-only mode and suspended relay operations. One hour later, Polymarket said it had identified and fixed the problem on the international site Polymarket.com, stating that a third-party service provider had been breached, that the incident had been referred to law enforcement, and that affected users would be "fully compensated." Trading subsequently resumed, and the status page marked the incident as resolved.
Odaily Planet Daily previously reported, according to Bubblemaps monitoring, that in the token theft incident caused by the breach of a third-party service provider at Polymarket, more than 700 users were affected, with approximately $2.7 million in stolen funds.
This is already Polymarket's third security incident this year: in May, an internal operations wallet was stolen due to a private key from six years earlier, resulting in a loss of approximately $700,000; on June 25, a third-party vendor was breached, leading to the injection of malicious scripts into the front end, and approximately $3 million in user funds were stolen, affecting fewer than 15 accounts, and the platform promised full compensation.
There is currently no evidence showing that the Polymarket incident is related to the Binance incident.
