The Binance hack on our nodes: 18,267 BTC out in one block, then silence

At 20:20 UTC on Thursday, a single block on the Bitcoin network took 18,267 BTC out of one of the wallets Binance lists in its proof of reserves. Our own node reads every address on that list. Since Binance began publishing its wallets in November 2022, no block had taken more than 7,180 BTC out of them. This one took two and a half times that in one go, spending 524 separate coins from the same wallet. It was the hack Binance disclosed later that night.

Then the wallets went quiet. Since 21:15 UTC, the bitcoin at Binance's listed addresses hasn't changed by more than 0.01 BTC. It sits at 645,043 BTC on our Binance bitcoin chart, which is free at daily resolution and hourly on Plus. Withdrawals are paused, and the balances have stood still with them.

The hour it happened

The bitcoin wasn't the only thing to go. This is what our nodes recorded on Thursday evening, all times UTC:

On the Binance ether chart (free daily, hourly on Plus), that 193,313 ETH fall is the biggest one-hour drop since our record starts in December 2022. The previous biggest was 158,369 ETH, in May 2023.

The freeze

The stablecoins went differently. The companies behind USDT and USDC can freeze their tokens at any address, and frozen tokens can't move. Bitcoin and ether have no issuer who can do that. Our frozen stablecoin chart (Plus) reads those frozen balances on our Ethereum node every hour.

Between 21:00 and 22:00 UTC they jumped by $2.2B. Frozen USDT went from $895M to $2.28B, and frozen USDC from $123M to $946M. The biggest one-hour jump we had recorded before was $225M, in November 2023. Frozen stablecoins on Ethereum now total $3.23B, 2.7 times the previous high of $1.20B set in April 2025. Our stablecoin supply guide explains how these tokens live on Ethereum.

How the market took it

Bitcoin opened the 20:00 UTC hour at $80,777 and traded as low as $78,250 before the hour was out. Longs took the hit. Our liquidations chart (Plus) counts $364M of bitcoin longs and $274M of ether longs liquidated between 20:00 and 03:00 UTC, against $39M of shorts. The day's running totals are free on our liquidations page.

The overnight low came in the 02:00 UTC hour, at $76,443. That stopped just above the line we flagged on Tuesday: recent buyers' average cost of $75,960, on our short-term holder cost basis chart (Plus). At 13:50 UTC on Friday bitcoin was about $76,600, less than 1% above it.

What to watch

Binance expects to reopen withdrawals over the weekend. That's when its listed wallets matter most. If customers pull coins out in size, the balances on the bitcoin and ether charts will fall hour by hour, and you'll see it there as it happens, not a month later in a statement.

Binance also says it will publish fresh proof of reserves after the fix. Our reserves check (Plus) puts our node's balance next to Binance's own last statement, a snapshot from 1 October, and picks up the new one the hour it appears.

On price, watch $75,960. The last two breaks below it on a daily close, in October 2025 and May 2026, were followed by falls of 44% and 25%.

How we measure it

Binance lists its proof-of-reserves wallet addresses on its own website. We read that list every hour and add up the balance of every listed address at the last block of each UTC hour, on our own Bitcoin node and our own Ethereum archive node. The single-block figure comes from the same block-by-block records. Our guide to exchange balances covers how exchange wallets are counted more broadly.

The total is a floor, not the whole of Binance's holdings. It can hold coins at addresses it doesn't list, and it moves coins between wallets all the time. On 27 October about 15,600 BTC left its listed wallets over two hours, and the next day Binance added a new wallet to its list holding about 11,600 BTC. That's normal housekeeping. One block taking 18,267 BTC out of one wallet, in the same hour that 193,313 ETH left on Ethereum, is not.

Frozen stablecoin supply is the balance of every address whose freeze flag has been set by the token's issuer, read on our Ethereum node at the end of each hour. Liquidations come from our own capture of the futures venues we cover.