On October 29, 2026, around $6.3 billion left Binance, the world's biggest crypto exchange. Most of it in about 20 minutes. It is the biggest crypto hack ever recorded.
The Binance hack explained by a stick figure: what Binance is, hot wallets vs cold wallets, what happened minute by minute, how much was stolen, how the attackers did it (what Binance confirmed vs what analysts believe), who the FBI says did it, where the money went, whether users lost money, and how to protect your own crypto.
In this video:
• ~$6.3B taken across 10 blockchains (TRM Labs, Elliptic, Binance, FBI)
• Bigger than Bybit (2025), Ronin (2022), Poly Network (2021) and Mt. Gox
• Binance: a compromised engineer's laptop and "additional points of breach"; analysts: the signing system was taken over
• The FBI attributes the attack to North Korea's TraderTraitor group (North Korea has not commented)
• Billions in stablecoins frozen; Binance says users are covered
• Not your keys, not your coins
Some details are still under investigation. Where something is not confirmed, the video says so.
Not financial advice. I am a stick figure.
Sources: TRM Labs, Elliptic, Chainalysis, FBI (Oct 31, 2026), Binance statements, TechCrunch, CoinDesk, AP, AFP, Decrypt, Cointelegraph, UN Panel of Experts (2024)
Chapters:
0:00 $6.3 billion in about 20 minutes
0:17 What is Binance?
0:42 Hot wallets vs cold wallets
1:18 What happened on October 29
2:18 How much was stolen (and the old records)
3:44 How did they do it?
5:29 Who did it? (the FBI's attribution)
6:21 Why would a country rob an exchange?
7:13 Where did the money go?
8:08 Is my money safe?
9:26 Other recent hacks
9:56 5 ways to protect your crypto
10:53 Who wins and who loses
11:44 What we learned
#binance #crypto #moneyexplained
