In the early morning of October 30, when most Chinese people were still asleep, the largest robbery in human history occurred in the cryptocurrency world.
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange founded by Changpeng Zhao, was suddenly ransacked by hackers. In just 20 minutes, the loss was as high as US$6.3 billion.
Overnight, Zhao Changpeng, the richest Chinese man, stood in the center of the storm.
1. Shocking robbery
Doesn’t the blockchain claim to be absolutely safe? How could so much money be lost all at once?
According to the preliminary investigation disclosed by Binance officials and Caixin.com, the hackers did not break through any advanced encryption algorithm at all, nor did they steal the wallet private key. They only invaded the personal laptop of an operation and maintenance engineer. The hackers used this as a springboard to invade the service container, submit unauthorized withdrawal instructions, and use the signature infrastructure to transfer assets.
It’s like you spent tens of millions to install a bulletproof and anti-theft door, but the thief got the access code from the security guard’s mobile phone.
On-chain data shows that hackers spanned 10 public chains including Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tron, and Solana in a very short period of time, splitting and looting assets with extremely skillful techniques.
As for the man behind the robbery, many security agencies in the industry pointed to the same name almost at the same time – Trader Traitor, which is the cryptocurrency branch of the North Korean hacker force Lazarus.
This gang has long been a well-known recidivist criminal in the industry. The case of nearly 1.5 billion US dollars being stolen from Bybit in 2025 was their work. In just one year, the amount of money committed quadrupled.
After the incident, Binance quickly suspended currency withdrawals and worked with stablecoin issuers to freeze approximately US$3 billion in assets. The actual net loss was approximately US$3.3 billion.
For Binance, this money hurts the muscles but not the bones.
Changpeng Zhao also made a public statement immediately, promising that all user losses will be fully borne by Binance’s SAFU security fund, futures insurance fund and the company’s own funds.
2. The fate of the richest man
This is not the first time Zhao Changpeng has encountered a “sky is falling” moment.
This Chinese programmer, who was born in Jiangsu and grew up in Canada, founded Binance in 2017 and built it into the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in less than five years.
At his peak, Forbes estimated that his net worth was close to 100 billion U.S. dollars. He was once the richest man in China and ranked among the top ten richest people in the world.
Even if the trees are beautiful in the forest, the wind will destroy them.
In 2023, the U.S. Department of Justice struck hard, accusing Binance of lacking an anti-money laundering mechanism, engaging in remittance business without a license, and violating sanctions.
For this reason, Changpeng Zhao resigned from his position as CEO of Binance and personally went to the Seattle court in the United States to plead guilty. In the end, Binance paid a sky-high settlement fine of US$4.3 billion, and Changpeng Zhao himself paid an additional US$50 million fine and was sentenced to four months in prison.
However, less than a year after he was released from prison, the company encountered the largest theft in history. Although he is no longer responsible for the daily operations of Binance, as the largest shareholder and spiritual symbol, he must be at the forefront of every storm.
A dozen days ago, he posted his semi-nude fitness photos on X and said, “I encourage everyone to compete on health, not wealth rankings.”
As soon as the words were heard, the $6.3 billion hole was slapped in the face.
3. 安全之殤
This theft case tore open the biggest fig leaf of the entire cryptocurrency industry – the so-called myth of decentralization, which is vulnerable to top hackers.
The underlying logic of the blockchain is to remove trust, remove intermediaries, and the private key is ownership. But in reality, the vast majority of ordinary users place their assets on exchanges and essentially trust the credit of centralized institutions.
This creates a ridiculous paradox, where people enter the crypto world because they don’t trust traditional banks, but end up handing all their money to exchanges that are even more opaque than banks.
Binance is already the safest player in the industry. It has a dedicated SAFU security fund, a top security team in the industry, and has experience in dealing with hacker attacks many times. But even it can be broken into by an employee’s laptop. You can imagine the security level of other exchanges.
What deserves more vigilance is the evolution of hacker organizations.
Today’s cryptocurrency theft is no longer a game played by technical geeks alone, but a dimensionality reduction attack by national forces. For a commercial company to fight against a country’s hacker force is an unequal war in itself.
At the same time, the lack of supervision makes this war even more chaotic.
Where is Binance’s headquarters? No one can tell. It holds licenses in many places around the world, but its core operations have always been outside the mainstream regulatory system. When something goes wrong, users can’t find the person responsible, and transnational law enforcement becomes extremely difficult.
The FBI in the United States has said it will investigate, and Trump has also stated that he will intervene. However, the hacker’s address is clearly on the chain. No one dares to guarantee whether or when it can be recovered. The transparency of blockchain is more like a irony in the face of real cross-border crimes.
4. 行業拐點
Confidence takes many years to build but only one day to collapse.
At the moment when withdrawals are suspended, many users will instinctively panic. Once a run occurs, no matter how rich their financial resources are, they will not be able to withstand it. Whether Binance can survive smoothly this time depends largely on the restoration of confidence in the next few weeks and the recovery progress of the remaining more than 3 billion US dollars in assets.
From a longer-term perspective, this incident may become a turning point for the encryption industry.
In the past few years, regulation has been tightened, but the industry always takes a chance that the law will not hold the public accountable. This shocking $6.3 billion case is equivalent to exposing the systemic risks of cryptocurrency nakedly in front of governments.
Next, stricter compliance requirements, more mandatory reserve transparency, and more stringent cross-border regulatory collaboration are almost inevitable trends.
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