GM. This is Milk Road, the crypto newsletter more comforting than having a self custody wallet during a hacking event.
Hereβs what weβve got for you today:
- βοΈ Binance just lost $6.3B.
- πͺ Polymarket also got hacked.
Securitize is the company quietly powering BlackRock, Apollo and KKR's move onchain. Here's what you need to know about Securitize.
Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko.
BINANCE JUST LOST $6.3B π¨
Yesterday afternoon, someone walked out of the worldβs largest crypto exchange with roughly $6.3B in crypto.
Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs traced the money leaving Binance's wallets across 10 different blockchains, most of it in under an hour.
That makes it the biggest crypto hack ever, by a BIG margin.
The previous record was Bybit's ~$1.5B in February 2025, so this one is more than 4x bigger. π
Source: TRM Labs, FBI, company disclosures
Binance paused withdrawals on Thursday evening and says it'll cover every dollar of user losses.
Here's what it has pieced together so far:
Binance's early investigation points to one hacked laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer (one of the people who keep its systems running).
That laptop gave the attacker a way into the internal system Binance uses to send out withdrawals.
On Ethereum, the attacker then got one of Binance's hot wallets (aka: an internet-connected wallet) to sign a permission handing control of the wallet to the attacker's own code.
John (our crypto analyst) compared it to a bank signing a power of attorney that hands the vault to a stranger.
As for who did it, TRM Labs says with "high confidence" that it was TraderTraitor, the North Korean state hacking crew that's part of the Lazarus Group.
Chainalysis CEO Jonathan Levin pointed at the same group, though Binance hasn't named anyone yet.
The good news: A big chunk of the loot was stablecoins, and the companies that issue them can freeze them on the spot.
Here's who has hit the freeze button so far:
- Tether: ~$1.57B of USDT.
- Circle: $800M+ of USDC.
- Ripple: ~$200M, per Binance co-CEO Yi He.
All up, Binance says ~$3B is now frozen.
The hacker caught on fast and started swapping whatever stablecoins it could into ETH (which nobody can freeze).
One attacker wallet even parked ~$60M of stolen USDT on Aave (the crypto lending app) and borrowed ~19,762 ETH against it before Tether's freeze landed.
(LlamaRisk, which manages risk for Aave, says Aave's depositors aren't exposed.)
That leaves roughly $3B out in the wild, plus a promise from Binance to pay back every cent of it.
β¦ but can it actually afford to?
THE COMPANY BRINGING $400T OF TRADFI ONCHAIN
$400 trillion in stocks, bonds, funds and private credit sits in traditional finance.
Someone has to bring it onchain.
Securitize is already doing it and in July 2026, they went public on the NYSE under ticker $SECZ.
Few facts about Securitize:
- $4.6B+ in tokenized assets under management
- Works with BlackRock, Apollo, KKR, Hamilton Lane, BNY and VanEck
- Partnered with the NYSE to build tokenized securities markets
- Tokenized their own stock at IPO
One of the largest tokenized money market products in the world (BlackRock's $BUIDL fund) runs on Securitize rails.
Here's what you need to know about Securitize.
BINANCE JUST LOST $6.3B (P2) π¨
On paper, yes: Binance can actually afford to pay back the loss.
Before the hack, Binance's wallets held roughly $144B of customer crypto (not counting Binance's own BNB token).
The stolen ~$6.3B works out to about 4% of that, and around half of it is frozen. π
Source: DefiLlama, TRM Labs, Binance
Analytics firm CryptoQuant counts ~$2.9B still sitting in the hacker's wallets.
Binance's emergency fund (called SAFU, short for Secure Asset Fund for Users) holds ~$1.17B, enough to cover ~40% of that, and Binance's own balance sheet covers the rest.
And it's a deep balance sheet, with Kyle (our Head of Research) estimating Binance brings in $15B+ a year in revenue.
CoinDesk did find one wrinkle in Binance's proof of reserves (a monthly report showing it holds enough crypto to back every customer balance).
The drained wallet was one of the wallets backing customers' ETH.
On Oct 1, Binance held exactly 100% of the ETH its customers had on the platform, so until it replaces the ~204,500 ETH that got taken, that backing sits closer to ~94%.
Bybit gives us a decent idea of how this usually plays out.
Its ~$1.5B hack ate ~8.6% of its reserves (about double Binance's hit, as a share), and Bybit still replaced the stolen ETH itself without any users losing funds.
The market flinched all the same:
- ~$628M of leveraged bets (trades made with borrowed money) got wiped out within an hour, ~97% of them bets on higher prices, per CoinGlass.
- BTC fell ~4.8% to below $77K, and ETH dropped ~5.7%.
- HYPE was the odd one out, up ~15% after ICE (the owner of the New York Stock Exchange) said it plans a U.S. market for perpetual futures (crypto contracts with no expiry date) built on Hyperliquid.
Kyle thinks Binance can plug the hole without much trouble.
His bigger worry is the fear this adds for anyone thinking about putting money into crypto, since it's the biggest hack ever at the biggest exchange in the world (and that's much harder to measure).
He's holding off on buying until there's confirmation the hack is over, but if he does buy, his list is UNI, AAVE and SKY.
UNI even held up after the hacker dumped ~$50M of stolen UNI on Uniswap.
John's takeaway: Bitcoin and Ethereum did exactly what they're supposed to, Binance's security didn't, and crypto is only as safe as the way you hold it.
What to watch this weekend:
- Binance expects to start reopening withdrawals gradually around Sunday.
- Its Nov 1 proof of reserves snapshot will show whether it has replaced the stolen ETH.
- It has also promised a full technical post-mortem explaining how the attacker got in.
And btw - fake "Binance recovery" accounts are out there, so stay SAFU and stick to Binance's official channels.
SEE WHAT INSIDERS OWN
The biggest investors in the world leave a paper trailβ¦
β¦but it's scattered across SEC filings, political disclosures and block explorers.
So we pulled it all into one place: Insider Portfolios, now live on Milk Road.
Track Vitalik Buterin, Warren Buffett, Nvidia, Nancy Pelosi and more:
- See every position they hold, plus what they've added or sold lately.
- Click any coin or stock to see which insiders own it.
- Get an email the next time they make a move.
The best part? Your account is already set up.
To turn on free Insider Portfolio alerts, simply sign in and click the bell notification icon on your preferred Insider page.
π Sign in here to access Insider Portfolio alerts.
BITE-SIZED COOKIES FOR THE ROAD πͺ
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Yikes! Polymarket also got hacked: About $2.68M was reportedly stolen in an hour through hundreds of withdrawals from users' deposit wallets.
Robinhood Chain adds 8 stock tokens: Visa, PayPal, McDonald's, Disney, Uber and BitMine now trade 24/7 on Uniswap, but Americans can't buy them.
Circle's Arc passes $1B in stablecoins: Up from $658M on Oct 18, with every fee paid in USDC and validators including BlackRock, Visa and Mastercard.
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