Biggest heist ever? Over $2 billion just drained from Binance

Around 23:25 Moscow time, more than two billion dollars left Binance wallets within minutes. The money spread across several blockchains, and Telegram channels put the total somewhere between $2.1 and $2.53 billion. At the time of writing, the exchange has said nothing.

According to on-chain trackers, the main flow went to a fresh Ethereum address, 0x5227…2f8c, which had been funded by the Binance 14 hot wallet minutes earlier. A block explorer screenshot shows about 195,000 ETH (roughly $452 million) on it plus another $1.75 billion in tokens, around $2.7 billion across all chains. Large amounts of bitcoin moved to a new bitcoin address at the same time.

Why everyone jumped to "hack": people noticed that the fee for one of the transactions was paid from an address linked to the Tornado Cash mixer, a classic move for someone covering their tracks. There is already talk of North Korean hackers, but for now it is just talk.

There is also a boring explanation. In 2022 Binance spooked the market by moving over $2 billion in bitcoin at once, and it turned out to be an internal proof of reserves transfer between its own wallets. Until the exchange speaks, both versions are on the table.

If the hack is confirmed, it will be one of the biggest thefts in crypto history. If not, it was the most expensive panic of the evening.