Crypto
Binance Paid Out $4.65B as Withdrawals Reopened
Customers took $4.65 billion out of Binance in the 9.5 hours after withdrawals reopened; net outflows were $3.64 billion, about 2.1% of assets. Bitcoin rose 1% on the day.
The first real test of Binance's recovery from the October 29 hack was not a bank run. Between 06:00 UTC on Sunday, November 1, when the phased restart began, and 15:30 UTC, customers withdrew $4.649 billion and deposited $1.01 billion, according to figures cited by the Japanese outlet CoinPost and reported by DigitalToday. That left net outflows of $3.64 billion, about 2.1% of the roughly $171 billion of customer assets Binance held on October 28. By 12:36 UTC all 15 assets and networks in the first phase, bitcoin first, were open again.
Two percent is a large number in dollars and a small one in proportion. After the FTX collapse in November 2022, outflows from rival exchanges ran for weeks; what Binance saw on Sunday looks more like customers who had been locked out for three days moving coins they had wanted to move anyway, plus some who simply wanted proof they could. Binance said withdrawal volumes were slowing after the initial surge, that deposits remained significant and that conditions were stable. A second phase, covering the remaining tokens and networks, has no fixed timetable yet.
The prices agreed. On Binance, bitcoin closed Sunday at $78,354.00, up 0.99% on the day, after touching $78,422.23, and rose to $78,878.01 in early Monday trading before settling near $78,300. BNB, the exchange's own token and the asset most exposed to doubts about it, closed Sunday up 1.24% at $712.69, and ether gained 0.87% to $2,275.31. None of those moves is large, but all of them went the right way during the hours when a disorderly exit would have shown up first.
The part of the story that is still open is the balance sheet. Binance has said it covered about 95% of the roughly $6.3 billion taken from its hot wallets, from its SAFU fund, its futures insurance fund and its corporate treasury, and that it secured more than $6.34 billion of its own funds on October 31. The new proof-of-reserves snapshot was taken on October 31; the full zero-knowledge proof needs more processing, and reports put its publication on November 2 or 3. Binance also said that all withdrawals now route through new wallet addresses, which it has added to its reserve disclosures.
What would change the reading from here is the second phase rather than the first. The coins still being sourced are smaller, less liquid tokens, and a slow reopening for those, or a reserve report that shows thin coverage in any of them, would hit their prices before it hit bitcoin's. For the largest assets, the evidence of the first day is that customers who could leave mostly chose not to.