Binance Hit by $5.9 Billion Hack, Alphabet Sinks 13% in Day of Fear for Stocks and Crypto

Binance freeze tally expands to $3 billion

Alphabet’s 13% plunge hits Kospi head-on

U.S. tech stocks, South Korea’s equity market and cryptocurrencies were rocked by back-to-back shocks on Oct. 30. Alphabet slumped more than 12% in New York trading, followed by a multibillion-dollar hack at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. After South Korean markets opened, Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. also tumbled, dragging the Kospi down more than 5% intraday.

Concerns over returns on artificial intelligence spending were already weighing on tech shares. The crypto market was then hit by fresh anxiety over exchange security. Setbacks that rattled growth expectations and market confidence piled up within hours, quickly chilling investor sentiment.

Binance Loses More Than $5.9 Billion, Says All Losses Will Be Covered

Estimated losses from the Binance hack have topped $5.9 billion. Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said assets drained from Binance in the attack totaled about $5.9 billion. Large transfers of Bitcoin, Ether and stablecoins were detected from wallets linked to the attacker.

Binance said on its official X account that the amount confirmed as frozen had risen to about $3 billion on Oct. 30. That was about $460 million more than the previously disclosed $2.54 billion. The company said it was working closely with law enforcement agencies, issuers, blockchain analytics firms and industry partners, and would continue tracing and freezing additional assets. It also said it would cover all losses and temporarily suspend deposits and withdrawals while it conducts security checks, freezes funds and coordinates with investigators.

The attacker has been swapping the stolen coins into other assets. On-chain analytics firm Lookonchain said the attacker sold seven tokens — UNI, ENA, PEPE, LINK, AAVE, ONDO and WLD — and accumulated 70,480 Ether. That was worth about $158.25 million at the time of the trades.

The fallout from the breach was quickly reflected in cryptocurrency prices. Bitcoin fell as low as $77,646, its weakest level in six weeks. Ether slid to $2,238.76, its lowest in two months. BNB, which is tied to the Binance ecosystem, dropped more than 8% over 24 hours.

Alphabet Shock Spreads to Samsung, SK Hynix

Alphabet’s third-quarter revenue rose 25% from a year earlier, but failed to meet market expectations. Capital expenditures reached about $51.4 billion, while free cash flow showed a deficit of about $9.1 billion. Investors focused less on revenue growth and more on the burden of investment and the pace of cash burn.

Unease over spending by U.S. big tech spread to South Korean chipmakers. Big tech and data-center operators are key buyers of high-bandwidth memory, or HBM, and server memory. If their funding burden rises and capital spending slows, that could affect orders and earnings outlooks for South Korean semiconductor companies.

Samsung Electronics was trading at 219,750 won, down 12,250 won, or 5.28%, from its reference price. SK Hynix fell 126,000 won, or 8.26%, to 1.4 million won. During the session, it also slipped below the 1.4 million won level.

The Kospi stood at 5,658.30 at the same time, down 279.36 points, or 4.70%, from the previous session. Its intraday low was 5,629.55, taking the decline past 5%. Just two days after surging 6.63% on Oct. 28 and reclaiming the 6,000 level, the index had fallen back into the 5,600 range.

Flows were also a drag. In the main Kospi market during the 10 a.m. hour, foreign investors were net sellers of 553.8 billion won and institutions sold a net 241 billion won. Retail investors bought a net 709.4 billion won, but that was not enough to reverse the decline. With chip stocks that had rallied on AI spending expectations and cryptocurrencies that traded on trust in platform security both under pressure at the same time, caution toward risk assets broadly was growing.