The following article is based on Decrypt's “Morning Minute,” a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt.

Binance has suffered a theft of approximately $6.4 billion — by a wide margin the largest cryptocurrency heist ever recorded, and roughly four times the $1.5 billion taken from Bybit in February 2025. The breach, attributed to North Korean hackers, struck on the same day Hyperliquid had been enjoying what was shaping up as the most positive day in the project's history, turning a landmark session into a market-wide stress test.

The stolen funds left across three different blockchains: roughly $3.5 billion in ETH, $1.4 billion in BTC and $630 million on Tron, with the final accounting still underway.

There was one immediate source of relief: stablecoin issuers can freeze their own tokens, a kill switch built into both USDT and USDC. Tether and Circle used it, locking up about $2.39 billion between them — 43% of the haul. That leaves somewhere between $2.6 billion and $3.2 billion still out there.

Aave also stepped in, freezing its V3 and V4 markets on Ethereum as a precaution; the worry was that the attacker would borrow against the stolen money and leave the lending protocol holding bad debt. The freeze ultimately extended to every DAO-operated V3 and V4 market — 292 reserves across 16 networks — after a wallet tied to the Binance exploiter deposited $60 million in USDT and borrowed 19,762 WETH, worth about $44.6 million, inside a three-minute window.

As the drama unfolded, Binance stated it was “aware of reports of a potential security issue” and that user funds were “completely safe,” pausing withdrawals on multiple networks. The clearest comment came from CZ, who no longer runs Binance but remains its largest shareholder: it “does look like a hack,” he said, and he expects user funds to be “fully covered.” Later in the evening, Binance announced that it had reserved more than $6.34 billion in company funds to cover losses, drawing on the exchange's SAFU fund, an emergency insurance reserve. Deposits are, indeed, “safu.”

On-chain investigator ZachXBT shared that the Binance hack funds were commingled with funds from the $388 million Bitget exploit, leading him to believe the same hacker group out of North Korea is behind the attack. As for how it happened, Binance pointed to a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which allowed the attacker to submit unauthorized transactions — before identifying “additional points of breach” in the hours that followed.

Markets Reel as Liquidations Pile Up

Crypto prices sold off hard in the aftermath. Bitcoin fell below $797,000, ETH dropped below $2,200 and BNB slid under $700, while more than $1.33 billion in positions were liquidated on the day as plunging collateral forced the automatic closure of leveraged trades.

Hyperliquid's Biggest Day

The hack came at the end of what had been shaping up as one of the most positive days for a crypto project in its history. Earlier on Thursday, Trade.xyz announced that Intercontinental Exchange — the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange — is investing in it. The plan is a regulated U.S. venue offering round-the-clock perpetual futures — derivative contracts with no expiry date — built on Hyperliquid, spanning stocks, indices, commodities, currencies and crypto, with its own exchange and clearing setup, pending approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC).

Stanley Druckenmiller is joining as well, the first of a small group of outside market figures. He already owns the trade: his family office disclosed a $23 million position in Hyperliquid Strategies earlier this year.

“I am excited to be an investor in trade(xyz) as they partner with ICE to bring 24/7 perpetual futures on Hyperliquid to the United States. As a market participant, I am looking forward to to using their innovative product to enhance my investment process.”

— Stan Druckenmiller (@standuquesne) October 29, 2026 (via X)

With the deal, Hyperliquid has its path to a fully regulated perpetuals offering inside the United States, counts Druckenmiller as an investor and a public tout, and has heard ICE's CEO describe the platform as “bigger than NASDAQ.” Elon touted the project as well, according to the newsletter's roundup.

HYPE shot as high as $97 on the day, up more than 20% at its peak, before falling to $89 in the Binance hack aftermath. As of Thursday morning, it stood at $93, still up 8% on the day.

Warner's outlook: Hyperliquid is a likely winner as a primary decentralized-exchange option versus centralized exchanges like Binance, which will likely be less trusted after the incident. But there is also a good chance the entire market gets dragged down by fears of more exploits looming. “Expect a bumpy ride,” he wrote.

Macro, Crypto and Markets

• Crypto majors were red in the Binance hack aftermath: BTC -3.6% at $77.5k; ETH -4% at $2,235; SOL -4% at $97; HYPE +8% at $92; ZEC -2% at $1,250.
• Top alt movers included PEPE (+8%), SKY (+5%) and ZRO (+2%).
• Oil rose 2% to $104; gold fell 1.2% to $3,980.
• Stock futures were red after Amazon fell 12% post-earnings; the Dow was flat and the Nasdaq was down 2.6%.

Around the Industry

• Coinbase posted $719 million in Q3 profit against analyst expectations of a 15-cent loss, though about $715 million of it came from gains on crypto the company holds.
• Walmart, Eli Lilly, Cigna, Carnival and Arcos Dorados blocked tokenized versions of their shares on the OKX-ICE venue, taking the count to 38 in two weeks.
• Crypto groups have spent about $176 million across more than 100 midterm races, with Fairshake and its affiliates accounting for $150.8 million through October 20.
• Roughly $11 billion in Bitcoin options — about 135,000 BTC and a third of open interest — expire on Deribit Friday, with max pain — the price at which the greatest number of options expire worthless — at $78,000 against a market near $81,500 and calls outnumbering puts nearly two to one.
• Trezor told anyone who bought one of its wallets from reseller CryptoBilis since March to move their funds immediately, after a customer in Indonesia reported finding an extra circuit board inside a Safe 5 with a cellular module that reads whatever the screen displays.

Corporate Treasuries & ETFs

• The Bitcoin ETFs saw $17 million in net inflows on Thursday; the ETH ETFs saw $105 million in net outflows.
• Strategy reported $19.53 billion in Q3 net income, nearly all of it a $20.91 billion paper gain on Bitcoin.

Meme Coin Tracker

• Meme leaders were mostly red: DOGE -4%, SHIB -3%, PEPE +8%, PENGU -8%, TRUMP -8%, SPX -10%, BONK -4%.
• Robinhood chain leaders were red: Pons -15% to $160 million; Cashcat -10% at $90 million; AI -12% at $63 million; Index +50% led top movers.
• Solana top movers included Hyperchan +40x, Purr +50% and GTA6 +25%; Stonk fell 8% to $105 million.

Token, Airdrop & Protocol Tracker

• Hyperliquid led onchain protocols in revenue on the day with $4.87 million amidst the liquidations; Papertrade was next with $2.34 million, Uniswap with $1.7 million and Pump with $1.69 million.
• Polymarket paused trading after users reported funds leaving their accounts, with Hudson Rock tracing the attack to a compromised script from web monitoring service DebugBear that hunts for logged-in trading sessions.
• Polygon brought its Open Money Stack to Solana, letting businesses on a chain that has processed over $5 trillion in stablecoin volume this year connect banking.

NFT Roundup

• NFT leaders were mixed: Punks +2% at 29.9 ETH, BAYC -1% at 6.2 ETH, Pudgy -1% at 2.5 ETH.
• Minds dot Games (+12%) and OTC Desks (+12%) led top movers.