Majority of funds stolen in cryptocurrency hack replenished, Binance says

Around 90% of stolen cryptocurrency assets following a hack on a major exchange has been replenished, according to Binance.

The security exploit targeted the platform, one of the world's biggest for trading digital assets, in what was described as one of the "largest bank heists in human history".

Cryptocurrency worth more than $6.3bn (£4.7bn) was stolen, while deposits and withdrawals were suspended for customers - with the company insisting user funds were safe and all hacking losses would be covered.

In a statement on Saturday, Binance said "90% of stolen assets have been replenished" and the company is "on track to reopen our withdrawals within our previously stated timeframe".

The remaining 10% consists of ‌tokens, which may take longer to recover "in the required amounts" because they are less ‌liquid, the statement added.

Binance said it will "absorb the financial impact" of the stolen funds, and not pass these on to their users. The company said they are working to resume withdrawal services for users by Sunday.

"We remain on track to reopen withdrawals within our previously stated timeframe (on Sunday, 2026-11-01) and will provide a further update as soon as details are confirmed," the statement continued. Deposits and withdrawals had been suspended for customers.

Users are covered by the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), set up by the company in 2018 to protect users assets in "extreme cases", including security breaches or platform-level incidents, it said.

The company claims it has more than 335 million users around the world.

Speaking after the incident on Friday, Richard Teng, the co-CEO of Binance, said the company's "initial investigation suggests this security incident may have started with a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop".

"To be clear: the attacker did not simply use one engineer's permissions, and this was not a single 'one-click' action. It involved a more complex attack process," he said in a post on X.

Ari Redbord, chief policy officer of the crypto analytics company TRM Labs, told Sky News: "This is an extraordinary hack, for its size and for the response... Few financial systems have ever shown a theft of this scale."

He explained the attacker was able to move billions of dollars across eight blockchain networks in about 15 minutes - and the elite North Korean hacking unit, theTraderTraitor group, has also been linked to the Bybit hack by the FBI.

It is believed the hacker responsible was preparing for at least 36 hours before the theft took place.

"The theft shows how exposed the system is to sophisticated attackers moving at a speed we have never seen," he added.

Digital assets worth more than $3bn (£2.2bn) were frozen once Binance's security issue was identified. This was in an attempt to prevent the funds from being cashed out by malicious actors.

(c) Sky News 2026: Majority of funds stolen in cryptocurrency hack replenished, Binance says