Binance Hackers Hold More Bitcoin Than Coinbase's Investment and Operational Reserves
Hackers responsible for the $6.3 billion Binance breach on Friday held a larger amount of Bitcoin than the total Bitcoin held by crypto exchange Coinbase for investment and operational purposes at the end of September.
Blockchain analysis firm Bitquery traced 18,270 Bitcoin (BTC), valued at roughly $1.4 billion, across 19 addresses connected to the hackers.
As of September 30, Coinbase reported holding 17,954 BTC designated for investment and an additional 117 BTC for operational use, totaling 18,071 BTC. The hackers’ Bitcoin stash exceeded Coinbase’s total by 199 BTC. Notably, Coinbase’s reported holdings exclude Bitcoin kept on behalf of its customers.
According to BitcoinTreasuries.net, Coinbase ranks eighth among publicly traded companies for Bitcoin holdings, based on its investment balance of 17,954 BTC.
On Friday, Binance confirmed suffering a $6.3 billion hack and stated that approximately $3 billion of the stolen assets have been frozen. The exchange assured that it will reimburse all losses incurred.
Blockchain security company TRM Labs linked the cyberattack to North Korean hacker group TraderTraitor. Binance revealed that investigators found additional points of compromise beyond their initial suspicion of a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop.
Bitquery data showed that 17 of the hackers’ Bitcoin addresses contained 1,000 BTC each, with the remaining funds held in two other wallets. The Bitcoins were stolen from Binance's hot wallets during an attack that impacted nine blockchains within under four hours on Thursday.
In addition, Bitquery traced 508,621 Ethereum (ETH) to the hackers on the same Friday snapshot, surpassing the 495,362 ETH held by The Ether Machine, which ranks third for corporate Ether owners according to BitcoinTreasuries.net.
The hackers initially took 200,630 ETH and increased their holdings by swapping stolen stablecoins and other tokens, Bitquery reported.
Latest updates reveal Binance has identified more breach points related to the $6.3 billion hack.
Live updates: Binance uncovers more breach points in $6.3B hack.
Why it matters
This data highlights the massive scale of the Binance breach, demonstrating the significant crypto holdings hackers amassed, which exceeds those of major institutional players like Coinbase, underlining the evolving security challenges in the cryptocurrency sector.
Prepared from the source material with AI-assisted editing and checked against the supplied facts.
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