Binance sets aside more than $6.34 billion to cover losses from a historic hack

Binance says it will use more than $6.34 billion to make users whole after a hack drained digital wallets tied to the exchange. The point for high-risk payment providers: the company is funding the reimbursement from its own reserves, including SAFU, rather than passing the loss through to customer balances.

1. The attack drained about $6.3 billion in bitcoin, ether, USDT, USDC, and other tokens from Binance’s operational wallets in roughly 20 minutes, according to the information released about the incident. During the security review, Binance kept deposits open and temporarily suspended withdrawals.
2. In an update sent to CoinDesk, Binance said it had set aside more than $6.34 billion to handle the incident. Of that amount, $5 billion was already available in the same cryptocurrencies that were affected, which the company said would be used to restore user accounts.
3. Binance said it is buying the remaining assets through public markets and over-the-counter, or OTC, transactions so its reserves match the tokens users lost. In other words, the plan is not to cash out users into fiat and call it a day; it is to rebuild the stolen token balances in kind.
4. The company also said it will not use other customers’ deposits to fill the hole. The compensation money and crypto come from corporate resources, with additional purchases used to replenish the wallets from which Binance records customer balances.
5. About $3 billion was frozen or protected with help from stablecoin issuers and other industry firms. Binance said those assets are separate from the more than $6.34 billion it has earmarked for reimbursement. A portion of the committed funds comes from the Secure Asset Fund for Users, or SAFU, the emergency reserve Binance created in 2018.

Binance said that in 2026 SAFU became composed entirely of bitcoin. That detail matters because, in a large incident like this, the structure of the reserve and the mechanics of replenishment are part of the actual recovery story, not just internal housekeeping.