Binance's own number is about $6.3 billion. In first findings posted late Thursday, October 29, the exchange put the "estimated total impact" at around $6.3 billion, and outside tallies bracket it: Glassnode near $5.3 billion, Chainalysis about $5.912 billion and TRM Labs about $6.36 billion, according to Bitcoin.com News. Even the low end is several times the roughly $1.5 billion Bybit theft of February 2025, the previous record. The drain started around 4:20 p.m. Eastern, when a transaction on the hot wallet known as Binance 14 carried 50 authorizations and one matched, and assets began moving to a new address minutes later, by Blockaid's analysis. Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals, says its preliminary investigation points to a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop that let an attacker reach a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawals, and says it "found no evidence of any wallet private key leak." It has not given a date for withdrawals to restart beyond "as soon as the security scan is complete," in co-CEO Yi He's words. The pledge to customers is unconditional: "Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and the company's funds. User funds are safe." Founder Changpeng Zhao's summary was shorter: "It hurts, but we will survive." Binance has promised a proof-of-reserves update after remediation and a technical post-mortem once the facts are verified.