Binance disclosed that North Korean hackers executed a months-long campaign against its systems, stealing billions of dollars in a breach that began in June. The revelation coincided with a broader market downturn, as Bitcoin fell below $76,000 following the US midterm elections and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin suggested a strategic pivot for the network’s primary asset.
Binance breach traced to June
Binance reported that the intrusion started when an employee downloaded a tampered Homebrew installation while attempting to install an AI coding tool. On October 20, attackers leveraged the compromised system and an internal AI tool to access two additional engineers’ systems and deploy malware. This allowed them to breach the exchange’s internal wallet-signing service and facilitate the theft.
“This wasn’t one mistake or one breach — it was a months-long campaign,” Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said in a post on X. Grayscale stated that while the $6.3 billion hack could temporarily hurt confidence in crypto markets, it would ultimately lead to stronger security practices across exchanges.
In separate operational developments, Binance France announced it will close all accounts on December 31. Assets remaining on the exchange after November 29 will incur monthly fees.
THORChain processes stolen funds
Despite an explicit warning from the FBI not to process funds linked to the Binance hack, the permissionless protocol THORChain restored trading on most networks on November 4. Chainalysis reported that THORChain processed more than $46 million from the hack in the first 72 hours, generating approximately $200,000 in fees according to the Wall Street Journal.
Buterin rethinks ETH value proposition
Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin stated that the network should promote ETH as a store of value rather than an asset that derives value from burning fees. He argued in a thread that the concept of “ETH as fee-burning token never was as strong as it seemed” and that optimizing for that metric would negatively impact Ethereum’s decentralization and capture resistance.
The discussion comes as median transaction fees on Ethereum fell from 35 cents to 3.5 cents between January and October, even as the number of daily transactions increased by more than half. Meanwhile, Ethereum Foundation researcher Justin Drake outlined an accelerated timeline for the network’s technical evolution, stating at Devcon 8 in Mumbai that developers aim to complete the full post-quantum and post-AI transition by December 2028.
Markets react to midterms and security news
Crypto markets faced pressure following the US midterm elections, where crypto super PACs spent $176 million across 100 seats with minimal apparent influence on the outcome. Bitcoin dropped 4.5% over the week to trade at $74,302, while Ethereum fell 6.3% to $2,117. The TRUMP memecoin lost one-third of its value, making it the biggest loser among the top 100 cryptocurrencies.
Other sector developments included a security breach at Gnosis Pay, which exposed customer payment card details, home addresses, and cryptocurrency wallet addresses. In prediction markets, Vanderbilt University researchers noted that a Polymarket user bet almost $200,000 on Nebraska Senator Pete Ricketts' re-election shortly before a poll release showed him in the lead.
