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The Last Page.
The last page, first.
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Can Binance Cover the Biggest Theft on Record?
North Korean hackers hit Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, on Thursday. The exchange says its own money covers every coin, and a reserve report due by Tuesday will show whether that holds.
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The story
Just after 4 p.m. New York time on Thursday, someone took over the system Binance uses to approve its own withdrawals. Within about 20 minutes, most of $6.3 billion in crypto was gone. Elliptic, a firm that traces stolen crypto, calls it almost certainly the largest theft of any kind on record.
More than four times the old record. On Saturday the FBI named North Korea. Its hackers set that old mark too, with $1.5 billion taken from the exchange Bybit last year.
Binance says the losses will not be passed on to users. It set aside $6.34 billion of its own money and says 95% of the stolen coins are already replaced.
If you own an S&P 500 index fund, you felt a small piece of this. Coinbase, which sits in that index, fell 10.6% on Friday. Robinhood, another member, lost about 7%.
Washington also opened 401(k) plans to crypto last year, so retirement money sits closer to this than it used to.
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A theft like this, and gold’s slide of nearly 7% in October, have savers asking where money is safe. One publisher’s answer starts with the dollar itself, plus three steps to prepare:
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You didn’t vote for this
Not with crypto. Not with a digital currency. Something far bigger than that, and it’s already been signed and sealed in the back rooms of D.C., ready to be issued by the U.S. Treasury.
Soon, every U.S. citizen will be forced to use Trump’s New Dollar to fill their gas tank, buy groceries, and pay medical bills. Which is why I’ve produced a critical new documentary laying out exactly what Trump’s New Dollar means for your savings, your investments, and your family’s financial future. Good investing,
Porter Stansberry
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Binance began reopening withdrawals at 1 a.m. Eastern on Sunday, starting with bitcoin and ether. By mid-morning, customers had pulled out a net $3.64 billion, about 2% of what Binance holds. A full public count of its reserves is due by Tuesday.
Tether and Circle, which issue digital dollars called stablecoins, froze about $2.4 billion of the loot. The thieves still control more than $3 billion in coins that nobody can freeze.
Michael Saylor, the best-known bitcoin buyer in corporate America, backed the exchange on Friday. “Binance has committed its own balance sheet to making customers whole,” he wrote. “I expect it to deliver.”
Tim Sun of HashKey Group, a Hong Kong crypto firm, read the same news darker. The breach “may further dampen risk appetite,” he said, and could push investors to rethink how safe exchanges are.
Same weekend, two readings. We ran both forward.
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If the count adds up
Our best-case projection: December 2026
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If the count comes up short
Our worst-case projection: March 2027
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Best case
DECEMBER 2026. Binance’s reserve count landed on time, and every major coin showed full backing. One week of nerves, then nothing. Bybit’s rush faded the same way last year, after it replaced its stolen ether within days and kept trading.
The $2.4 billion that Tether and Circle froze stayed frozen. More than a third of North Korea’s haul never became money it could spend. Exchanges spent the fall rebuilding the approval systems the thieves had walked through.
Matt Hougan of the crypto fund manager Bitwise had said hacks like this have historically done little to crypto’s returns. This one followed the pattern.
Coinbase and Robinhood climbed back, and so did the small slice of them inside your index fund. At the club, nobody brings up Binance anymore, which is how you know it ended well.
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Worst case
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MARCH 2027. The full count came out a week late, and ether, the coin the thieves took most of, showed less than full backing. That was all the doubters needed. Online skeptics had called the theft an inside job from the first days, with no proof. Now they had a gap to point at.
Withdrawals turned from a rush into a drain. Every time a stolen wallet moved, prices flinched, because the thieves still held over $3 billion nobody could freeze. No arrests, either.
U.S. bitcoin funds, which saw $643 million pulled out the day after the theft, kept bleeding. Coinbase and Robinhood gave back more, so your index fund paid a toll on a market you may never have touched.
Eric Schiffer, a reputation consultant, had warned on Fox Business that “the bloodbath of AI hacking is to come.” It found new targets. Your bank mailed a letter about new security checks, and this time you read every line.
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Whichever ending you expect, your savings need a home. The same publisher names five assets he believes a December event could lift:
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If you have savings in the bank or any money in the market, you need to make time for this immediately.
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How it ends
You get the Bybit ending, a bad week that fades by Christmas, unless Binance’s reserve count shows a hole.
Start with the size of the vault. Binance holds about $171 billion of customer assets, so the theft came to less than 4% of it. The company has already replaced 95% from its own pocket, and customers tested that with Sunday’s withdrawals. The big coins paid out on demand.
Crypto has run this test twice before. In 2014 Mt. Gox lost about 850,000 bitcoin it could not replace, and its customers waited a decade for partial refunds. In 2025 Bybit lost $1.5 billion, borrowed and bought its way back within days, and kept trading.
A hack ends where the victim’s checkbook ends, and Binance’s runs deep.
For you, the two endings cost very different amounts. A clean count leaves you with one bad Friday in two small index-fund stocks. A hole would hit everything with crypto in its name, including the new crypto choices in 401(k) plans.
One part ends badly either way. North Korea keeps whatever it manages to launder, and on Thursday afternoon it took three times its haul from all of 2025.
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Binance’s full proof-of-reserves report, due by Tuesday and built on an Oct. 31 count of what it holds. Its own early snapshot says its 10 main coins are fully backed, and this report lets outsiders check. If it runs late, or any big coin comes in under 100%, the worst case starts early.
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Before you go
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Ride along inside Tesla’s driverless Cybercab. The host argues it is one piece of a far bigger Musk plan:
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I’m about to get into this Cybercab, and it’s going to take me to what Elon Musk called:
“The most epic AI project ever.”
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Every weekday morning, one big story carried all the way to its ending. If you would rather go without it, this button signs you off.
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The Last Page.
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