CZ Asks Musk to Stop Trolling as Binance Weighs $6.3B Hack Losses
Binance's CZ told Elon Musk it was a bad time to troll after a $6.3 billion hack, while the exchange says it can cover losses without selling SpaceX shares.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, publicly asked Elon Musk to stop mocking the exchange after a hack that Binance estimates at about $6.3 billion. Decrypt's headline puts the figure at $6.4 billion, but the other outlets cite $6.3 billion. If that figure holds, it would be the largest theft in crypto history, according to Cryptopolitan and BeInCrypto.
About $3 billion of the stolen funds has been frozen on-chain, according to BeInCrypto and Cryptopolitan. BeInCrypto also reports that withdrawals have been paused since the attack.
The exchange with Musk
Cryptopolitan reports that Musk posted a grimacing emoji under a thread about the hack. BeInCrypto says he also posted "Everyday is Zeroday" as the news broke, followed by fire and laughing emojis. CZ replied that he respected Musk but that it was a "bad time to troll". He asked for a little support and noted that Binance's $500 million stake in Musk's 2022 Twitter takeover is now worth more than $1 billion in SpaceX shares.
BeInCrypto explains the route: X was absorbed by xAI, and SpaceX bought xAI in February. SpaceX listed on Nasdaq in June at $135 a share. CZ also did some rough math in public. He put the hack at $6.x billion, with $3 billion frozen and $1.x billion in the SAFU emergency fund, leaving a gap of about $2 billion. BeInCrypto says SAFU holds about $1.17 billion in Bitcoin.
Binance co-CEO Yi He replied that the company's revenue for the year is enough to cover the losses, so it does not yet need to sell the SpaceX shares. Cryptopolitan says CZ clarified that he was not proposing a sale. He said he was only pointing to funds Musk "might know" about.
How the breach account has shifted
Binance first blamed a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, according to Cryptopolitan. In its latest update, the exchange said it had found additional points of breach. CEO Richard Teng wrote that the attacker did not simply use one engineer's permissions and that it was not a single "one-click" action. Binance says it has found no evidence of a wallet private key leak.
Attribution is also unclear. BeInCrypto describes the attackers as North Korea-linked. Cryptopolitan says Binance has not pinned responsibility on any individual.
Bitcoinist adds a DeFi angle. It reports that a Binance-linked attacker deposited 60 million USDT into Aave and borrowed about $44.6 million in wrapped Ether. Aave then introduced restrictions across its V3 and V4 lending markets. Musk responded on October 29 that superintelligent AI agents will at some point do this to gain currency for themselves. Bitcoinist stresses that he did not say AI was involved in this attack.
What traders should watch
The main open questions are when withdrawals resume and how Binance closes the gap it says it faces. BeInCrypto notes that SpaceX lockups release shares in stages. The last general batch unlocks December 8, some major investors stay locked into 2027, and Binance has not said which group it belongs to. The same outlet says SPCX fell almost 10% in the week to October 28, as about 1.6 billion newly unlocked shares became sellable.
Traders may also want to follow further Binance updates on the investigation and any further changes to Aave's lending restrictions. BeInCrypto notes that critics have compared the loss-coverage promise to FTX's 2022 claims. Binance has so far said only that it will cover the losses itself.
Sources
- Elon Musk Warns AI Agents Could Exploit Crypto After Binance Hack Bitcoinist
- Elon Musk is Trolling the Binance Hack, and CZ Reminds Him of SpaceX Investment BeInCrypto
- CZ tells Musk 'bad time to troll' amid $6.3 billion Binance hack Cryptopolitan
- CZ Tells Elon Musk to Stop Trolling Over $6.3B Binance Hack, Cites SpaceX Stake Bitcoin.com News
- Elon Musk, CZ Trade Blows Over SpaceX Shares After $6.4B Binance Hack Decrypt
Written with AI assistance from the sources above and checked against them. Not investment advice.