Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, widely known as CZ, urged Elon Musk to stop mocking the exchange after a cryptocurrency theft estimated at about $6.4 billion. The dispute centred on Binance’s investment in SpaceX, which CZ said is now worth more than $1 billion, and came as the exchange sought to reassure markets that it has enough resources to absorb the loss.
CZ responds to Musk’s apparent mockery
The exchange became the focus of an online exchange after Musk responded to a discussion about Binance’s potential losses with a grimacing emoji. The conversation followed estimates that, although a large amount of the stolen cryptocurrency had been frozen, Binance’s eventual loss could be around $1 billion. The exchange has approximately $144 billion in assets under custody.
CZ initially said the damage could be somewhat higher but that Binance would still be able to cover it. Musk did not explain the meaning of his emoji. Another user then shared an old post by former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried in which he said his company had enough funds to cover its losses. FTX later collapsed, creating an uncomfortable comparison for Binance.
“Bad time to troll,” CZ wrote in a post addressed to Musk, while saying he had considerable respect for him. He pointed to Binance’s SpaceX shares, which came from the exchange’s $500 million investment in Musk’s purchase of Twitter, and said the holding was worth more than $1 billion. CZ asked Musk to show some support for Binance.
According to Decrypt, the exchange’s co-CEO Yi He then appeared to address the possibility that Binance might have to sell the shares. She said the company’s annual revenue was sufficient to cover the losses and that it did not yet need to sell its SpaceX investment.
CZ later clarified that he had not proposed selling the shares. He said he was simply highlighting funds that Musk might know about in an effort to reassure him about Binance’s financial position.
What is known about the theft
The incident began on Thursday, October 29, when at least $6.4 billion in cryptocurrency was taken from wallets associated with Binance across multiple blockchains. Initial reports put the amount moved from Binance-linked wallets at at least $5.57 billion across Ethereum, Bitcoin and Tron.
The attackers carried out numerous transactions, including one involving more than $1.6 billion in USDT sent to a newly created Ethereum address. USDT and USDC are stablecoins, cryptocurrencies designed to maintain a value linked to the US dollar. Their issuers, Tether and Circle, can freeze tokens in particular addresses, giving them a recovery tool that does not exist for every cryptocurrency.
Tether and Circle initially froze about $1.8 billion linked to the attackers and later increased the combined amount to $2.39 billion. Ethereum, however, cannot be frozen by a central issuer. That made it more difficult to halt the movement of stolen funds after the attackers converted assets into ETH.
The suspected attackers subsequently used decentralised exchanges such as Uniswap and the lending protocol Aave. These platforms allow users to trade or borrow cryptocurrency without relying on a traditional intermediary to approve each transaction. Decrypt tracked wallets that received tens of thousands of ETH through these operations, including 19,762 ETH borrowed against approximately $60 million in USDT.
Binance’s plan to cover the losses
Binance has reserved more than $6.34 billion in company funds for the incident. That includes $5 billion already held in the same tokens that were stolen. The exchange said it is obtaining the remaining assets through market purchases and over-the-counter transactions, a process that can take longer when some tokens have limited liquidity.
Blockchain analytics firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, a hacking group linked to North Korea. The group had previously been blamed for the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025. Chainalysis estimated the Binance theft at about $6.4 billion.
The size of the theft and the use of several blockchains highlight the difficulty of recovering cryptocurrency once it has moved through decentralised trading and lending systems. The ability to freeze some stablecoins has helped restrict part of the stolen funds, but assets such as ETH cannot be stopped in the same centralised manner.
Moneyiar market picture
Moneyiar market data at 12:48 p.m. on November 1, 2026, showed BNB, Binance’s associated token, at $711.7068665596, up 0.93% over 24 hours but down 3.7% over seven days.
Other listed assets showed mixed performance:
- AKEDO (AKE): $0.009069324, down 22% in 24 hours and 68.8% over seven days.
- RedStone (RED): $0.1356203116, up 2.28% in 24 hours and down 5.06% over seven days.
Moneyiar also listed Billions Network (BILL) at $0.0139971939, down 0.59% over 24 hours and up 10.04% over seven days; that reading was timestamped September 21, 2026, at 1:39 a.m. These figures describe market prices at the stated times and do not determine how Binance will ultimately absorb or recover the stolen funds.
