NEW YORK (Realist English). In the early hours of 30 October, the price of Bitcoin dropped below $77,000, according to trading platform data. The fall followed the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, reporting a suspected hack of a hot wallet, as well as a deepening selloff in stock markets. According to CoinGlass, over 24 hours, $1.55 billion worth of positions were forcibly closed, of which $1.34 billion were long positions.
What happened with Binance
The incident began on the evening of 29 October. According to on-chain analysts, an attacker gained control of the hot wallet “Binance 14” and withdrew about $2.7 billion within seconds. Binance later confirmed the hack. Co-founder Changpeng Zhao said what happened “really does look like a hack,” while Binance co-CEO Yi He promised that the exchange would cover all user losses from the SAFU fund and its own reserves.
Estimates of the scale of the leak vary. In an official statement, Binance said total damages were estimated at about $6.3 billion, of which around $3 billion had already been frozen on-chain. By the morning of 30 October, analytics firm Chainalysis confirmed that at least $5.912 billion had been stolen, with funds moved across multiple blockchains, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron, Ripple and several layer-2 networks. If the estimate is confirmed, this will be the largest theft in crypto industry history — almost four times larger than the Bybit hack in February 2025, in which $1.5 billion was stolen.
The investigation has not yet established the exact entry point. According to preliminary data, the hack may have occurred through a compromised laptop of a DevOps engineer, allowing the attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized transactions; Binance found no evidence of private key leakage. Tether froze about $1.6 billion in USDT linked to the incident, and in total stablecoin issuers froze more than $2.4 billion.
Market reaction
Bitcoin reacted with a sharp decline. According to The Block, within an hour of the first reports of fund withdrawals, the price fell from about $80,800 to $78,300, then briefly recovered above $79,000. By the evening of 29 October, Bitcoin was trading around $76,664, down 4.5% over the day.
By the morning of 30 October, the decline continued: according to Moneycontrol, Bitcoin hit a six-week low near $77,266, and on some platforms dropped to $76,469. Ethereum lost more than 5%, falling below $2,200; BNB — Binance’s ecosystem token — fell 7.1% to $698.65; XRP dropped 7% to $1.21.
Liquidations were cascading. In the hour after withdrawals began, $627.7 million worth of positions were forcibly closed, of which $606.6 million were longs. The largest single liquidation order was $11.09 million on the BTC/USDT pair on Binance itself. Over 24 hours, according to CoinGlass, liquidations reached $1.55 billion, and the number of affected traders exceeded 246,000.
Pressure from the stock market
The crypto decline coincided with a deepening selloff in equity markets. As Reuters notes, Bitcoin’s correlation with the Nasdaq 100 rose to about 0.63 as of 26 October, compared with 0.36 in early July.
This means that, despite diverging cumulative returns over several months, on a daily basis Bitcoin is moving increasingly in tandem with tech stocks. Wintermute analysts warned that the growing correlation with the equity selloff — driven by concerns over inflation and leverage in the tech sector — increases the risk of losses spreading to the crypto market.
Chinese tech stocks lost about $480 billion in market value from July to 26 October: the STAR50 index fell almost 40%. Although Bitcoin rose 26.6% over the same period, analysts warn that if the stock decline leads to margin calls and forced selling in other markets, investors may begin selling crypto assets to cover losses.
Analysts’ assessments
Expert opinions on the consequences of the hack are divided. Rick Maeda, head of markets at Laevitas, called the market reaction “fairly restrained” given that this may be the largest exchange theft in history. In his view, mitigating factors include $144 billion in assets under Binance’s custody, the $4.3 billion fine paid to US authorities in 2024, and the prompt freezing of stablecoins.
Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital asset research at Standard Chartered, is less optimistic: “I suspect the negative price momentum is not yet exhausted. Only after the unfreezing of assets and greater clarity…” Amanda He, investment director at ChainUP Investment, noted that the initial drop may have been due to the sale of stolen coins, but then panic spread more widely: “Binance remains the largest exchange by trading volume, so it really is at the center of this storm.”
The Binance hack became a catalyst that amplified already mounting market turbulence. Bitcoin found itself caught between two pressures: fear of a possible sale of stolen funds and growing correlation with the stock market selloff.
The prompt freezing of assets and Binance’s promise to cover losses limited the scale of panic, but the full picture is not yet clear — a significant portion of the stolen funds remains untraced, and the investigation has not established the exact mechanism of the hack. The coming days will show whether caution or panic prevails in the market, and whether Binance can restore the trust on which the stability of the entire crypto industry depends.
