Binance Puts the Damage at $6.3 Billion, Blames a Compromised Engineer's Laptop and Promises to Cover Every Loss

The first statement was edited twice within 13 minutes, FinanceFeeds noted, and no government agency or regulator has commented publicly. Attribution to any group remains unconfirmed.

Who pays for the loss?

Binance says it will cover all losses from its SAFU emergency fund and company resources. That promise is the one that matters to customers, and the arithmetic is awkward. FinanceFeeds calculated that SAFU, which Binance topped up with $1 billion in bitcoin earlier this year, covers less than a third of the roughly $3.3 billion not yet frozen, implying at least $2.3 billion would have to come from corporate funds. That is the publication's estimate, not a Binance figure.

Freezes have helped. Tether blocked more than $1.567 billion of USDT and Circle more than $800 million of USDC on Thursday night. The rest sits largely in assets such as ether and bitcoin that no issuer can freeze, and Crypto Briefing cited Nansen data suggesting the attacker still held about $3 billion across several blockchains.

What did the market do?

Less than the numbers suggest. Bitcoin was trading around $78,500 on Friday morning, down about 2 percent on 24 hours and 4.4 percent on the week, according to Analytics Insight, which put total liquidations near $1.5 billion over the day, mostly long positions. Sources differ on bitcoin's exact low, from about $77,000 to $77,650. BNB, Binance's own token, was down about 5 percent.

What to watch next: an updated proof of reserves, a date for reopening withdrawals and a fuller account of how one laptop led to a service container that could submit withdrawals. Until then, the exchange is asking customers to take its word that they will be made whole.