After losing 6.3 billion dollars, how much capital does Binance have left to compensate?

Original | Odaily Planet Daily Wenser

Waking up, the world is shaken!

The largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, was suddenly hacked for $6.3 billion, suspected to be the work of the North Korean hacker organization Lazarus Group. Around 9 AM, Binance stated that it had confirmed the freezing of assets amounting to approximately $3 billion, ensuring user funds are safe; He Yi emphasized that Binance will bear all losses caused by this hacking attack.

The focus of the cryptocurrency market has shifted from "the scale of funds stolen from Binance and its impact on the crypto market" to "can Binance compensate for the asset gap caused by this hacking attack?" Odaily Planet Daily will briefly discuss and analyze this issue in conjunction with relevant data for readers' reference.

Unveiling the "World's Largest Cryptocurrency Exchange": Customer assets nearly $130 billion, reserves before the theft approximately $166 billion

Before discussing Binance's potential losses of billions of dollars, let's understand the foundation that allows Binance to firmly hold the title of "the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange."

Binance's 9 Years: 335 million users, customer assets exceeding $129.4 billion

According to Binance's "2025 Blockchain Industry Annual Review Report," in 2025, Binance's total annual trading volume reached $34 trillion, with spot trading volume exceeding $7.1 trillion, and the daily trading volume of all products increased by 18% year-on-year. Binance Alpha 2.0's trading volume surpassed $1 trillion in 2025, attracting 17 million users; at the same time, it helped 5.4 million users avoid potential losses of $6.69 billion.

According to information from Binance's official website, as of the time of writing, Binance's global user count has surpassed 335 million; customer assets exceed $129.4 billion; and the 24-hour trading volume exceeds $125.5 billion, making it the undisputed global leader.

Additionally, media and third-party estimates suggest that Binance's total revenue for 2024 is approximately $16.8 billion, with a net profit of about $464 million; revenue for 2025 is estimated to be around $16-17 billion.

Binance's Proof of Reserves: Early October snapshots all greater than or equal to 100%, total asset scale exceeding $166 billion

After the FTX collapse, proof of reserves (PoR) for cryptocurrency exchanges became an industry standard, and Binance is one of the leading exchanges setting this standard.

According to the latest proof of reserves data released in early October this year, Binance's main asset reserve ratios were all not less than 100%. Among them:

BTC reserve ratio 100.35%, net account balance 688,572.68 BTC, on-chain wallet balance 691,003.593 BTC;

ETH reserve ratio 100.00%, net account balance 3,799,136.43 ETH, on-chain wallet balance 3,799,139.752 ETH;

USDT reserve ratio 103.88%, net account balance approximately 3.2028 billion, on-chain wallet balance approximately 3.3271 billion;

USDC reserve ratio 108.26%, net account balance approximately 717.8 million, on-chain wallet balance approximately 777.1 million.

BNB, SOL, and XRP reserve ratios are 100.47%, 100.00%, and 100.77%, respectively.

At current prices, the net balances of the six mainstream cryptocurrencies BTC/ETH/USDT/USDC/BNB/SOL total approximately $133.6 billion; the on-chain wallet balances total approximately $135.8 billion. This PoR covers about 55 cryptocurrencies, with third-party Verifelse pricing the total at approximately $166.1 billion.

It is worth mentioning that the stolen wallet "Binance 14" also belongs to the reserve asset storage wallet, which at the time held approximately 1.26 billion USDT and 89,475 ETH, involving a total of 37 assets. According to reports from CoinDesk, approximately 204,500 ETH were stolen, accounting for about 5.6% of its ETH reserves, which may bring the ETH reserve ratio down to about 94%; the stolen assets such as ENA, UNI, PEPE, and AAVE account for about 7% to 15% of Binance's corresponding holdings, and the reserve ratios of USDC and some altcoins may also fall below 100%. The first of each month is the fixed date for Binance to release PoR proof of reserves, with the next release scheduled for November 1, when we can pay attention to the corresponding funding replenishment situation.

SAFU Fund: Binance's backup security fund, totaling 15,000 BTC, worth over $1.15 billion

In addition to the above funds, Binance has another source of funds that can cover this attack, which is the SAFU fund mentioned multiple times before. According to on-chain data, this fund currently contains 15,000 BTC, valued at approximately $1.157 billion at the current BTC price.

Compensation Gap Faced by Binance: Stolen $6.3 billion - Frozen $3 billion - SAFU Fund $1.15 billion = ?

After discussing the basic information, the subsequent compensation gap amount that Binance faces in this theft incident becomes clear.

The confirmed scale of stolen funds is $6.3 billion, with confirmed frozen assets totaling approximately $3 billion; the total value of the SAFU fund is about $1.157 billion, leaving Binance with a compensation gap of $2.143 billion.

Data Comparison: What does $2.14 billion mean for Binance?

This loss gap, compared to Binance's estimated revenue of about $17 billion in 2025, is about 12.6%; compared to the overall customer assets of $129.4 billion, it accounts for only 1.65%; compared to the previous total reserve scale of $166 billion, it accounts for only 1.3%.

If estimated based on Binance's net profit for 2024, the remaining gap of about $2.14 billion is equivalent to about 4.76 years of net profit for Binance; if calculated based on Binance's current valuation of $100 billion, this loss accounts for about 2.1%; if calculated based on CZ's previous Forbes net worth of about $110 billion, this funding gap accounts for only 1.9%.

In summary, for other smaller exchanges, this amount may far exceed their total asset value; but for the large and established Binance, this funding gap will take some time to fill but will not be crippling.

Binance will definitely get through this, and the crypto industry will continue

In May 2019, Binance's hot wallet also experienced a hacking incident, resulting in a loss of about 7,000 BTC, valued at around $40.7 million at the time. After the incident, Binance emphasized that user funds were unaffected, and the related losses were fully covered by the SAFU fund, and this incident was ultimately resolved smoothly.

Although this time the scale of stolen funds is larger and involves more cryptocurrencies, as the leader of the crypto industry, Binance serves as a "barometer of the crypto market." Given its past industry reputation, the scale of capital accumulation, and various preparations, this attack incident can still be resolved properly. Go Binance, go crypto!