Binance hack fuels withdrawals as futures positions hold steady

Through Nov. 5, Binance-associated wallets saw net outflows of about 28,316 BTC, Santiment said. Withdrawals were initially suspended and then reopened in stages from Nov. 1. Across all exchanges tracked, Bitcoin balances declined by 38,631 BTC, or 2.92%, between Oct. 25 and Nov. 5. Since that drop began four days before the breach, the firm said the full decline should not be tied to the incident.

Santiment recorded net exchange outflows on Oct. 29 of 22,317 BTC and about 324,640 ETH. These figures include tracked customer withdrawals and institutional transfers, not just stolen assets. Ethereum-based USDT outflows were about 1.71 billion on Oct. 29 and 3.94 billion on Nov. 2, after Binance began reopening withdrawals. The report said those readings did not show that all the stablecoins had been stolen or withdrawn from Binance.

Negative Bitcoin commentary outweighed positive comments by about 2.7 to one during Oct. 29–30. Binance also took all six places on Santiment’s top trending cryptocurrency stories list that day. Yet by Nov. 5, Bitcoin futures open interest was near $8.97 billion and Ethereum’s around $8.03 billion. BNB futures open interest stood at about $427 million, with BNB trading near $692. Bitcoin funding rates remained mostly positive and within familiar ranges; Santiment said traders were not collectively taking unusually aggressive bearish positions. BNB’s Oct. 29 trading volume reached $3.78 billion, its highest daily reading since Feb. 5.

Ethena’s ENA recorded 169 active withdrawal addresses in one hour on Oct. 29, compared with about 20–25 in many surrounding hours. Santiment logged 208.62 million ENA in net exchange outflows that day. Separately, the report cited about 217.5 million stolen ENA, worth roughly $40 million at the time, that attackers converted into Ethereum through decentralized trading platforms. Santiment said ENA had no issuer-controlled freezing mechanism equivalent to those available for USDT and USDC.

In a Nov. 4 recovery update, Binance said it had replaced about 98% of affected assets with company resources. It was still buying the remaining tokens through markets and over-the-counter channels, with lower liquidity slowing the process. A reserve snapshot taken at 00:00 UTC that day covered 44 tokens, up from 10; Binance estimated that generating its zero-knowledge proof would take 50–60 hours.

Binance has also asked Arbitrum’s DAO to release frozen assets: 8,425.997 ETH and 74.56 million ARB. The exchange estimated that discussion, voting and execution could take about 49 days, or longer if legal claims arise. Proposed indemnification agreements would apply New York law, with disputes assigned to state and federal courts in New York County.