Binance reopens withdrawals in phases, says 95% of stolen assets covered
Victoria Shinder1 min readBinance published its fourth recovery update on the hot wallet breach at 04:08 UTC on 1 November. It said phase one of withdrawals would resume that day between 06:00 and 09:00 UTC, with deposits unaffected throughout.
Phase one covers fifteen networks: BTC, ETH (ETH, USDT, USDC), BSC (BNB, USDT, USDC), TRX, SOL, XRP, ZEC, DOGE, TON (USDT, GRAM), Polygon, AVAX C-Chain, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism and SUI. Binance says it ranked tokens by user demand over the past week, will reopen each network and asset pair after its own stability and security checks, and will add further networks later. It warns of delays during the rollout and says a failed withdrawal on a listed network can simply be retried.
On the money, the update moves the covered share again: about 80% in the second update, 90% in the third, published on 31 October with a proof-of-reserves snapshot, and about 95% now. Balances in BTC, ETH, USDT, BNB, SOL, USDC, XRP, USD1, RLUSD and ZEC are stated as fully backed, and the outstanding 5% are tokens outside that list, which Binance says are less liquid and slower to buy at the required scale. It repeats that it will absorb the loss rather than pass it to users and that a post-incident report will follow the investigation.
What it means
The order of reopening is a statement of what Binance can already prove: the networks on the first list are, with a few additions, the assets it says are fully backed. The thing still missing is the account of how the breach happened. Until the post-incident report appears, the reopening shows that funds can move again, not that the cause is closed.