Cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced early on Sunday that it would begin allowing withdrawals in a phased process.
The company froze all deposits and withdrawals after hackers stole $6.3 billion worth of crypto from Binance wallets. In its latest update, Binance said it has now covered 95% of the stolen assets, and it’s still working to buy the “remaining affected assets,” which are “less liquid in the market and take longer time to source at the required scale.”
“Our commitment remains unchanged: Binance will bear the financial impact of the stolen funds,” the company added. “These losses will not be passed on to users.”
As for the withdrawal freeze, Binance said it did not make the decision lightly, as it understands “how important reliable access to withdrawals is for our users.” Nonetheless, the company said this was a necessary “precaution while our teams worked to contain the incident loss, assess its impact, restore affected services, and complete security checks.”
Binance will resume supporting withdrawals in phases, depending on network and asset type. As of Sunday morning, the company’s network status page showed a mix of normal, partially suspended, and fully suspended statuses — for example, Bitcoin withdrawals and deposits are still listed as partially suspended, while Ethereum deposits are normal and withdrawals are partially suspended.
The company also said users should expect “temporary delays or longer processing times due to traffic volume.”
“Resuming withdrawals is a major milestone, but our work continues,” Binance said. “We will continue strengthening our safeguards, completing the recovery process, and providing updates as progress continues.”
Binance subsequently shared that between 6am and 3:30pm Coordinated Universal Time, it processed $4.6 billion in withdrawals and $1.0 billion in deposits, for a net outflow of $3.6 billion — 2.1% of its total assets under management.
The company also said it will publish a more in-depth incident report when its investigation is complete.
Binance previously blamed North Korea hackers for the breach. On Saturday, the FBI said that a North Korean group known as TraderTraitor was responsible, and that the group was converting the assets primarily into Ethereum, with further laundering likely.
This post has been updated with information about net outflows during the initial withdrawal period.
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