Elon Musk, CZ Trade Blows Over SpaceX Shares After $6.4B Binance Hack — SkimNews
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- Binance lost at least $6.4 billion in cryptocurrency on Thursday, October 29, from wallets associated with the exchange across Ethereum, Bitcoin and Tron, marking the largest crypto theft on record.
- CZ told Elon Musk on Friday, October 30, to stop trolling Binance, invoking SpaceX shares worth more than $1 billion from Binance’s $500 million Twitter-takeover investment; he later clarified he had never proposed selling them.
- Elon Musk replied to a post estimating Binance’s losses near $1 billion with a grimacing emoji; the reaction drew a comparison to Sam Bankman-Fried’s old claim that FTX had enough money to cover losses, although Musk did not elaborate.
- Yi He said Binance’s annual revenue was sufficient to cover the losses and that the exchange did not yet need to sell its SpaceX shares.
- Binance reserved more than $6.34 billion in company funds, including $5 billion already held in the same tokens stolen, and said it is acquiring the remaining assets through market and over-the-counter purchases that can take longer for tokens with limited liquidity.
- Tether and Circle froze about $1.8 billion in attacker-linked assets initially and $2.39 billion in total. Attackers subsequently used Uniswap and Aave to move funds into Ethereum, which cannot be frozen by a central issuer; Decrypt tracked 19,762 ETH borrowed against roughly $60 million in USDT.
- TRM Labs and Chainalysis attributed the attack to North Korea-linked TraderTraitor, previously blamed for the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025; Chainalysis estimated the Binance theft at approximately $6.4 billion.
Why it matters: Binance has reserved more than $6.34 billion for the loss, including $5 billion already held in the stolen tokens, while its co-CEO said annual revenue was sufficient and the $1 billion-plus SpaceX stake need not be sold. Acquiring the remainder through market and over-the-counter trades can take longer when token liquidity is limited.
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