Cybersecurity firm CertiK has recommended that cryptocurrency exchanges impose hard dollar limits on their hot-wallet holdings rather than relying solely on cold-storage ratios to gauge security.

The recommendation came as several exchanges recently disclosed how much they hold in cold wallets, seeking to reassure customers after the record $6.3 billion Binance hack, which targeted the exchange's hot wallets — the internet-connected wallets exchanges rely on to process customer withdrawals, and the portion of reserves directly exposed to online attackers. Gate reported that 88.26% of its total assets were in cold storage, while Coinbase said it keeps more than 99% of customer assets offline.

"Cold storage is a useful measure of online exposure, but it is not a standalone security score," CertiK's research team told Cointelegraph.

Regulators Set Cold-Storage Benchmarks

Several jurisdictions already mandate cold-storage minimums. South Korea requires crypto service providers to keep at least 80% of customers' crypto assets by value in cold storage. Singapore's guidelines call for at least 90%, Japan's framework requires at least 95%, and Hong Kong's baseline for licensed crypto trading platforms is 98% — a spread that shows how widely regulators have converged on storage ratios as the core custody safeguard, the very approach CertiK argues should be paired with dollar-based limits.

CertiK said that while higher cold-storage levels generally reduce online exposure, the benefit becomes less significant at very high levels. Rigid storage ratios could also slow withdrawals, force rushed transfers and concentrate risk in key-management systems, the firm added.

Instead, exchanges should consider setting hot-wallet caps for each asset and blockchain according to the strictest of three limits: a percentage of customer liabilities, estimated withdrawal needs, and an absolute loss ceiling based on the exchange's financial resources and recovery capabilities.

"Flexibility should support operating liquidity, while hard dollar ceilings and circuit breakers limit potential loss," the research team said.

For customers, the practical significance of such caps is a defined ceiling on how much of an exchange's reserves sit at online risk at any given moment — set by what a platform could actually absorb rather than by a storage percentage alone.

Binance Replenishes 98% of Affected Tokens

Binance said last week that it had replenished approximately 98% of the tokens affected by the hack and would absorb the losses tied to the incident. In a recovery update issued on Wednesday, the exchange said the remaining tokens were less liquid and would take longer to acquire, leaving the replenishment effort short of complete.

Meanwhile, hackers linked to North Korea have created memecoins in an effort to launder funds stolen in the theft, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. The firm traced roughly $430,000 through six newly launched tokens on NEAR, where liquidity pools helped obscure transfers between wallets, though the transactions remained traceable onchain. The traced sum is a small fraction of the $6.3 billion stolen, leaving the bulk of the funds' path an open question that onchain traceability allows analytics firms to keep examining.