Bitcoin has shown more resilience than Strive CEO Matt Cole expected after a $6.3 billion security breach involving Binance, although he warned that it is still too soon to say whether the cryptocurrency has reached a market bottom.
Cole said the incident had not weakened his long-term view of Bitcoin. Speaking to Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction, he compared the event with a bank robbery: a serious attack on a company’s wallets and systems, rather than a failure of Bitcoin’s underlying network.
Bitcoin was trading near $77,400 at 4 p.m. on Saturday, roughly 4% below its level shortly before the attack began on Thursday, according to CoinGecko data cited in the report. Cole said the decline was less severe than he had anticipated given the size of the breach and weakness across the wider market.
Strive, a publicly traded company with Bitcoin on its balance sheet, reported holding 43,000 BTC as of Oct. 23. Cole said he remained confident that the breach did not alter Bitcoin’s investment case over a reasonable time horizon. He nevertheless stopped short of declaring that prices had bottomed.
A recovery that could take months
Cole characterized the market as being in an “early spring” stage of recovery. In his view, that phase could continue for another six to nine months, with prices advancing gradually rather than immediately returning to rapid growth or reaching fresh highs.
That description reflects a cautious outlook on the pace of any recovery, rather than a claim that a bottom has already formed. Cole’s central point was that the Binance incident should be assessed separately from the operation of the Bitcoin network itself.
Paul Chapman, financial crime director at Wirex, made the same distinction in comments to Cointelegraph. He said Bitcoin itself had not been hacked and that the incident involved the systems of a single company.
The difference matters because crypto exchanges act as intermediaries that hold or manage assets and facilitate transactions. A breach at an exchange can therefore affect users, confidence and prices without demonstrating that the blockchain network supporting Bitcoin has been compromised.
How the market reaction compares with earlier hacks
Glassnode described Thursday’s Binance breach as the largest cryptocurrency hack on record, with about $6.3 billion affected. The reported amount exceeded the combined losses from the next nine largest crypto hacks. The previous record was the $1.5 billion Bybit exploit in February 2025.
Glassnode also reported that three of the 10 largest crypto hacks have occurred since the start of 2025, and that all three involved exchanges. The figures highlight the continuing security risks faced by centralized trading platforms, even as the underlying assets and networks remain distinct from the companies that provide exchange services.
Bitcoin’s response to the Binance event also appeared milder than its reaction after the Bybit exploit. According to a Bitfinex market report, Bitcoin fell about 5% after the Bybit hack, moving from close to $100,000 to approximately $95,000 amid the breach and broader market volatility.
Data from Anchorage Digital cited by CNBC showed that Bitcoin’s average decline during the first 24 hours after previous crypto exchange exploits was 8.3%. Against that historical comparison, the roughly 4% decline cited after the Binance attack was relatively limited, although it does not establish how prices will behave next.
Questions over Binance’s transaction signing process
The incident has also drawn attention to how exchange wallets approve transactions. Ido Ben-Natan, CEO of blockchain security firm Blockaid, said the attackers appeared to have compromised Binance’s transaction-signing process.
Blockaid’s analysis identified an Ethereum transaction containing 50 signed authorizations covering different transaction counts. One matching authorization enabled code controlled by the attackers to operate through the wallet. Ben-Natan said pre-signing checks could have prevented the malicious authorization.
Binance said on Friday that it had found no evidence that wallet private keys had been leaked. The company’s investigation was still under way at the time of the report.
The distinction between stolen private keys and a compromised signing process is significant for understanding the reported breach, but it does not remove the immediate financial impact of the incident. The event has put exchange security controls, authorization procedures and the risks of holding assets through centralized platforms under renewed scrutiny.
Moneyiar market picture
Moneyiar market data at 12:33-12:34 p.m. on Nov. 1 showed Bitcoin at $77,699.09, up 0.30% over 24 hours but down 3.17% over seven days. BNB, the Binance-linked token, was priced at $711.87, gaining 1.08% over 24 hours while remaining 3.64% lower over seven days.
The same Moneyiar data showed Notcoin at $0.000362228, down 1.08% in 24 hours and 1.28% over seven days. Ontology Gas was at $0.0720270553, up 0.83% over 24 hours and down 4.98% over seven days. These figures provide a snapshot of market conditions after the breach, but they do not resolve whether Bitcoin has reached a lasting low.
