CZ Calls for Industry Security Alliance in First Interview Since $6.3B Binance Hack

November 4, 2026 | COINOTAG

Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao has given his first public account of the October 29 breach that drained roughly $6.3 billion from the exchange, saying that artificial intelligence is making attacks on the crypto industry more frequent and harder to stop.

Zhao delivered the assessment during an appearance on the Talking Tokens podcast on Tuesday — his first public interview since the incident — and called for the industry to establish a security alliance to counter the escalating threat.

Background: Binance and its co-founder

Zhao co-founded Binance in 2017 and built it into the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume. He stepped down as chief executive in November 2023 after Binance agreed to a $4.3 billion settlement with U.S. authorities over anti-money-laundering failures, and he subsequently served a four-month prison sentence. Richard Teng has led the exchange as CEO since Zhao's departure, while Zhao remains one of the company's largest shareholders and continues to be one of the sector's most prominent figures.

The October 29 incident is not the first major security event connected to the exchange's ecosystem. In October 2022, an attacker exploited a vulnerability in the BSC Token Hub cross-chain bridge and withdrew roughly $570 million in BNB, prompting BNB Chain to temporarily halt its network. At roughly $6.3 billion, the latest breach is more than ten times the size of that 2022 exploit.

AI-driven threats spur calls for coordination

AI-assisted phishing campaigns, deepfake impersonations, and large-scale social engineering have become an increasingly documented part of the industry's threat landscape, targeting exchanges, protocols, and individual users alike. In recent years, security researchers and protocol teams have built coordination efforts such as the Security Alliance (SEAL), a threat-sharing and incident-response group established in 2023.

Zhao's appeal for collective defense adds one of the industry's most recognizable voices to that push, and comes as he warned that AI is making attacks on crypto companies more frequent and harder to stop. The interview, as reported, did not specify how the proposed alliance would be structured, whether it would build on existing groups such as SEAL, which organizations would take part, or a timeline for its formation.

This article was first published on COINOTAG: CZ Calls for Industry Security Alliance in First Interview Since $6.3B Binance Hack