Binance gradually resumes withdrawals... “We pay our own burden to avoid customer loss” (comprehensive)

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Go Il-hwan = Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, which suffered hacking damage worth $6.3 billion (about 8.4 trillion won), has decided to gradually resume withdrawal services.

According to Reuters on the 31st (local time), Binance will first resume withdrawals of major virtual currencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB, Solana, XRP, and Dogecoin.

Binance explained that Bitcoin withdrawals through the Bitcoin network are occurring normally.

They also announced that they plan to allow users to check whether their assets properly exist on the blockchain within the next 36 to 40 hours.

Binance said it had restored 95% of the stolen assets with its own funds.

Binance explains that because the remaining 5% are assets with low liquidity, it may take more time to secure the necessary volume.

Binance plans to bear the losses incurred due to hacking itself rather than passing them on to customers.

To preserve damaged assets, a fund worth 1 billion dollars (approximately 1.35 trillion won) set up by Binance to protect customer assets from security incidents, futures trading insurance fund, and company financial funds were invested.

In addition, Binance announced that it had tracked and recovered or frozen about $3 billion of the stolen assets in cooperation with other virtual currency exchanges, blockchain analysis companies, and investigative agencies.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said that investigative agencies, including the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the United States Secret Service (USSS), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), supported the tracking and freezing of stolen assets.

Binance has begun a technical security audit of this incident.

Co-CEO Richard Tung explained that the hackers used malicious software designed to erase traces of intrusions.

Binance previously announced that $6.3 billion worth of virtual currency was withdrawn without permission on the 29th due to an attack targeting an engineer's hacked laptop and loopholes in the transaction approval system.

The amount of damage from the Binance hack that occurred on the 29th is the largest among cryptocurrency hacking incidents.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) identified 'Trader Trader', known as North Korea's elite hacking organization, as the mastermind behind the hacking incident.

According to the FBI, circumstances were discovered where TraderTrator converted the stolen assets to Ethereum.

However, Binance said that it did not point out a specific group as being behind the attack, and that other blockchain analysis companies are analyzing it as the work of highly sophisticated hackers.

Binance added that it is in constant contact with regulators around the world.

Binance has 335 million registered users around the world, and as of the 2025 annual report, the size of assets in custody is approximately $162.8 billion (approximately 217.5 trillion won).