Washington at the bedside of Binance. Twenty-four hours after the biggest heist in cryptocurrency history, the file moved from block explorers to the White House and federal agencies.
Donald Trump says he is examining the matter and the president of the CFTC sees it as proof that offshore platforms must be placed under American supervision. Chainalysis also confirms the North Korean trail that we detailed yesterday morning.
Key Points
The American president commented on the Binance theft on Friday, without announcing any measures.
Michael Selig (CFTC) calls for federal registration for foreign exchanges.
The Secret Service and the FBI are involved in tracking down funds with Circle.
Chainalysis blames the $6.4 billion stolen on the TraderTraitor group.
Trump and the CFTC get involved in the Binance hack
Donald Trump was asked about the flight Friday afternoon at a press conference. His response has the accents of a bank teller.
“But it’s a hack, that’s the problem,” he said. He then spoke of the time “when we signed a check”, before concluding that he had “always found it a little dangerous”.
No announcement behind. The president, who pardoned Changpeng Zhao a year ago, simply said that he was looking at the matter and that Binance promised to reimburse its customers, reports The Block.
Michael Selig was much more offensive on CNBC. The president of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC, the American derivatives watchdog) believes that the hack “exactly proves” the validity of the rules proposed by his agency at the beginning of October.
“The real problem is unregulated offshore platforms, which do not have the same safeguards as our financial markets in the United States,” he said.
Its solution has a name: a federal option allowing foreign exchanges to register with the CFTC and adopt the cybersecurity standards of American markets.
Selig takes care of clearing the blockchain. For him, the breach started from an employee's laptop, not from Ethereum.
And on-chain traceability gives regulators something to act as neighborhood policemen.
Congress is also agitated. Senator Cynthia Lummis is bringing back the Clarity Act, blocked in the Senate.
According to her, the text would have offered crypto companies legal cover to freeze a suspicious transaction “the moment law enforcement calls”.
Binance Hack: The Secret Service and Chainalysis on the trail of TraderTraitor
The FBI confirmed that it is working with public and private partners to measure the scale of the attack. The Secret Service is also on the case.
The federal agency says it works with private actors, led by Circle, to identify, freeze and trace stolen funds. The USDC issuer has already locked up around $823 million.
Chainalysis attributes the theft to the North Korean group TraderTraitor, already accused of the Bybit hack in February 2025.
The decisive clue fell on Friday around 5:30 a.m. Paris time. According to the Chainalysis report, its investigators saw in real time funds leaving Binance mixing with those stolen from Bitget last month by North Korean hackers.
However, the hacker tried to overtake stablecoin issuers. He converted $325 million in stablecoins into $285 million in ETH in twenty minutes, then shipped $175 million to bridging wallets.
The first frosts fell on Thursday at 10:14 p.m. Paris time, less than an hour after the siphoning began.
Around $2.8 billion is frozen at this point according to Chainalysis. The rest slips away.
Thousands of automated transactions, each initiated by sending exactly 1 TRX, are chipping away at the trail on Tron.
Binance is aiming for a resumption of withdrawals on Sunday and says it has provisioned $6.34 billion to cover losses, a promise that nothing legally obliges the exchange to keep.
The Clarity Act will wait until at least the midterms on Tuesday.
