Binance to resume withdrawals after covering $6bn in stolen tokens — Dawn

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced that it will resume client withdrawals on Sunday after covering approximately $6 billion of the $6.3 billion in tokens stolen during a cyberattack. As Dawn reports, the first stage of restoring operations is expected to begin between 06:00 and 09:00 GMT and will cover 15 crypto assets, including Bitcoin, Ether, XRP and Dogecoin.

Coverage of stolen assets

Binance said it had purchased replacement tokens using company funds and had already covered about 95% of the stolen assets. The remaining tokens are less liquid, so acquiring them in the required volume may take more time.

To cover the losses, the exchange used part of the $1 billion Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), part of the futures insurance fund and corporate funds. Co-CEO Yi He said that 50% of SAFU funds would be used for these purposes, and that the company intends to restore the fund's size to approximately $1 billion. Overall, Binance has reserved about $6.34 billion of its own funds to cover the losses.

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FBI statement on the cyberattack

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said that the state-backed North Korean group TraderTraitor was responsible for the attack. According to the FBI, law enforcement officers observed members of the group converting stolen assets into Ether and expect further money laundering using related technologies.

Binance is also working with industry partners to freeze some of the stolen assets. As of Friday, around $3 billion of these funds had been located. Co-CEO Richard Teng called the incident a sophisticated attack involving a compromised laptop and malware designed to erase traces of activity.