Latest update on the record-breaking cryptocurrency theft: 90% of the losses have been covered

Binance said on Saturday (Oct. 31) that it has covered 90% of the approximately US$6.3 billion in token assets stolen from its hot wallet in the record-breaking cryptocurrency theft. Binance said it will continue to purchase the remaining relevant token assets through market and over-the-counter channels until all tokens reach 100% coverage. 90% of losses already covered On Thursday (Oct. 29), Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, disclosed a major security incident. Multiple market sources indicated that the exchange's hot wallet was suspected of being hacked, resulting in the theft of approximately US$6.3 billion in token assets. The incident triggered a sharp drop in digital token prices. That day, Bitcoin fell as much as about 3.7% intraday and dropped below US$79,000, while mainstream cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum also came under pressure, and the overall market capitalization of the crypto market retreated significantly. Regarding the incident, Binance said in its latest statement that it has covered 90% of the affected amount of the hacker-stolen losses, "all BTC, ETH, USDT, BNB, SOL, USDC, XRP, USD1, RLUSD and ZEC are now 100% fully backed. Binance will bear the financial impact of these stolen funds, not users." The exchange said the remaining 10% consists of tokens outside its top ten tokens, "which have lower liquidity, meaning it may take longer to acquire the required quantities." Binance said it is using its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), part of its futures insurance fund and the company treasury to replenish the assets. Binance said, "Our commitment remains unchanged: Binance will fully bear the financial impact of the stolen funds in this incident. We will continue to honor this commitment through measurable progress, transparent reporting and concrete actions." The company also noted that its "next milestone" is to restore user withdrawal services by Sunday (Nov. 1) (subject to security checks), while continuing to investigate the attack. It remains unclear how the largest recorded cryptocurrency theft occurred. The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange initially said the hack may have involved "the compromise of a DevOps engineer's laptop, which allowed the attacker to access a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions." But co-CEO Richard Teng later said the attack involved a more complex process rather than abuse of a single engineer's privileges. This article is reposted from "Cailianshe," authored by Zhou Ziyi; edited by GMTEight's Xu Wenqiang.