Binance recovers 95% of $6.3 billion stolen crypto, to resume phased withdrawals on Sunday

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, says 95% of the $6.3 billion in digital assets stolen from its platform has been recovered. It is resuming withdrawals, but in phases rather than all at once.

The theft is being considered the biggest cryptocurrency theft in the world. It took place on Thursday, when bitcoin and other digital currencies worth $6.3 billion were stolen from Binance. Hackers removed cryptocurrency worth $6.36 billion from various digital wallets in just 20 minutes. In Indian currency, this comes to more than Rs 60,000 crore.

In a late-night post on X on Saturday, Binance announced that withdrawals would restart. The first phase will run from 6 am to 9 pm on Sunday. It will cover bitcoin, ether, BNB, Solana, XRP, Dogecoin and several other tokens.

According to the exchange, the remaining 5% of the stolen assets is in tokens with low liquidity, so gathering the required amount may take longer.

Earlier on Saturday, the company had said it had set aside the required quantity of digital currency to cover 90% of the missing assets. It had also promised to return the full amount to customers. Binance's latest update says 95% of the stolen tokens have now come back, which is why phased withdrawals can resume.

On who is behind the theft, the Federal Bureau of Investigation of the United States has blamed a hacking unit called TraderTraitor, which is said to be backed by North Korea. The bureau said on Saturday that members of the group have been seen converting the stolen assets into Ethereum.

Binance says its team took precautionary steps after the incident to secure the platform. Security was assessed, and a check was made on whether the affected services were ready to be switched on again. The aim is to restore withdrawals in phases once the security and readiness checks are complete. Deposit services are running and were not affected by the incident.