Bitcoin Holds Near $77,000 After the Binance Hack as $1.57 Billion in Leverage Is Wiped Out
Prices dipped less than feared, but liquidations quadrupled, options traders bought puts, crypto stocks slumped and institutions started pulling coins off exchanges.
Friday, October 30, 2026/4 min read
The strange thing about the biggest theft in crypto's history is how little it moved the market. Bitcoin fell to an overnight low of about $76,400, its weakest since 18 September, then clawed back to around $77,350 by 11:00 UTC on Friday, down about 3 percent on 24 hours, according to CoinDesk. The damage was done instead in leverage, in exchange stocks, and in where big investors choose to keep their coins.
This follows our morning report on Binance's $6.3 billion estimate and covers only the market through Friday afternoon.
How far did bitcoin, ether and BNB fall after the Binance hack?
Reuters put bitcoin's six-week low at $76,469.82 early in Asian hours, with ether at $2,185.83; CoinDesk saw ether touch $2,170 before recovering to about $2,220, down 4 percent. BNB, Binance's own token, was the worst of the majors at minus 6.2 percent, with trading volume more than tripling and funding rates turning negative, a sign traders were paying to be short it.
When US stocks opened at 13:30 UTC the pressure returned. CoinDesk's live log had bitcoin at about $76,800 at 13:43 UTC, down 4 percent on 24 hours, while the Nasdaq fell more than 2 percent on Intel and Amazon guidance that had nothing to do with crypto. The coins were hit by a hack and a tech sell-off at once.
$1.57 billion of liquidations and a rush for puts
Futures liquidations across the market quadrupled to $1.57 billion over the 24 hours, CoinDesk reported, with bitcoin positions accounting for $522 million and ether $361 million, overwhelmingly long bets. Futures volume rose 74 percent to $346 billion while open interest fell 3 percent to $136 billion, the signature of forced selling. In options, five of the six most-traded bitcoin contracts were puts, led by a $74,000 strike expiring 13 November; in ether, a $2,000 put for the same date had more than twice the volume of any other contract.
Liquidity thinned too. Aravind Srinivasan of the market maker GSR told Reuters the average spot bitcoin bid-ask spread was five times normal in the early hours, and 2.5 times for ether, before narrowing. Wintermute and GSR disclosed their Binance exposure on Thursday night, under 20 percent and under 5 percent of net equity respectively, the kind of statement market makers only make when clients are asking.
Coinbase and Strategy shares, and the ETF question
Crypto equities took the clearest hit. Coinbase fell about 12 percent after the open, Strategy about 11 percent, Circle 9.5 percent, Robinhood about 9 percent, Bullish 8.3 percent and Galaxy 6.8 percent, according to CoinDesk's log at 13:43 UTC. Coinbase and Strategy had both reported third-quarter results on Thursday, so not all of that is Binance. Analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald, TD Cowen and Compass Point all told clients to buy the dip, with Cantor's Ramsey El-Assal writing that this is painful but not 2022, CoinDesk reported.
US spot bitcoin ETFs took in $17 million on Thursday, their fourth straight day of inflows, according to Farside Investors data cited by CoinDesk, but that session closed before the theft began; Friday's numbers arrive after the US close. One early signal is unflattering: CoinDesk's Coinbase premium, which compares bitcoin's price on Coinbase with Binance, dropped about two standard deviations below its annual average, a reading last seen in the March 2023 banking panic, meaning US buyers were not stepping in.
Money leaving exchanges, and how rivals responded
Institutional investors are rushing to pull digital assets off centralised exchanges and rebalance their books, people familiar with the matter told CoinDesk, though amounts and destinations were unclear. Amanda He of ChainUp Investment told Reuters her firm sold its Binance positions before withdrawals were suspended, and Standard Chartered's Geoffrey Kendrick said the negative price action may continue until assets are unfrozen. Fundstrat's Sean Farrell told Yahoo Finance the hack does not currently look like a solvency event for Binance, which reduces the risk of a feedback loop.
Rival venues mostly said they were fine. Bybit, which lost $1.5 billion to a similar attack last year, said it was unaffected, with trading and withdrawals open, and offered Binance support. Binance.US said it is a separate platform operating normally, and Coinbase said it was not affected. India's CoinDCX, which relies on Binance for liquidity, put its futures market into reduce-only mode so traders can close but not open positions. Aave, which the attacker used to borrow ether against stolen USDT, froze its markets on Thursday night and reopened them on Friday with all loans over-collateralised.
The next prices that matter are Sunday's, when Binance says withdrawals return, and Monday's, when it has promised a full proof of reserves. If either slips, the market has already shown where it thinks the floor is.
Published in The Outspoken Digest
Newsletter
The Digest, in your inbox
One edition, sent when it is ready. No noise, and your address is never passed on.
Read Next
More Crypto →
Only Abu Dhabi's Regulator Has Spoken on the Binance Hack, While Washington Stays Silent and Rivals Offer Help
Oct 30, 2026/4 min read
What We Know About the Binance Hack, the Largest Crypto Theft on Record
Oct 30, 2026/5 min read
Binance Puts the Damage at $6.3 Billion, Blames a Compromised Engineer's Laptop and Promises to Cover Every Loss
Oct 30, 2026/2 min read
