Bitcoin Holds Up After Binance’s $6.3 Billion Hack, but Market Unease Persists
Summary
- Bitcoin remained relatively stable, falling only about 4% despite the Binance hack at the world’s largest exchange.
- Binance’s pledge of full compensation for user losses and its Bitcoin purchases helped support prices, but market unease persisted amid concern over additional hacks.
- The market largely viewed the episode as an operational shock, limiting the reaction unlike during the 2022 FTX collapse, though there is also the precedent of Bitcoin falling 14% after the Bybit hack.
Forecast Trend Report by Period
Bitcoin has remained relatively resilient even after Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was hit by a $6.3 billion hack. Still, concern is growing across the market about the risk of further breaches.
Bloomberg reported on November 2 that Bitcoin was trading around $78,300 as of 1 p.m. in Singapore. That left it down only about 4% from last week’s peak, just before Binance disclosed the hack.
Market participants say Binance’s swift response helped limit Bitcoin’s losses. The exchange said it would fully compensate users for any losses tied to the incident. Caroline Mauron, co-founder of Orbit Markets, said Bitcoin’s resilience over the weekend showed the market trusted Binance’s announcement. Investors appear convinced the exchange has enough funds to absorb the losses.
Sean McNulty, a derivatives trader at market maker AQC Tech, said Binance’s Bitcoin purchases to compensate users were also helping support prices. Still, many people see the episode as only the tip of the iceberg and expect more hacks as AI-powered cyberattacks become more capable, he added. If Binance, the world’s biggest exchange, can be hacked, then no one is safe.
Demand for short-term downside protection is also rising. Data from crypto derivatives platform Deribit showed the one-day 25-delta put skew, a measure of how much more expensive short-term downside hedges are than bullish bets, rose about 1 percentage point in 24 hours to 6.37.
Kelly Ye, head of research at trading firm Talos, said the market was treating the incident as an operational shock rather than a systemic one. Binance’s order-book depth fell 25% to 30%, but buying returned within hours. That marks a very different pattern from 2022, when confidence across the broader market collapsed. During FTX’s failure that year, Bitcoin plunged 19% in three days.
The FBI has blamed both the Binance hack and last year’s Bybit hack, which caused about $1.5 billion in losses, on the North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor. The initial impact on Bitcoin after the Bybit breach was also limited, but the token went on to fall about 14% over the following week.
Minseung Kang
minriver@bloomingbit.ioBlockchain journalist | Writer of Trade Now & Altcoin Now, must-read content for investors.