How Binances $6.3 Billion Hack Went Down

At about 4:20 p.m.on Thursday, a string of unusual transactions started to cause alarm at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange.Money was pouring out of the company’s accounts, a multibillion-dollar deluge of digital coins.

It had all the hallmarks of a crypto heist — a high-speed bank robbery conducted over the internet.As the news spread, Binance’s top executives put together an informal war room on Wea, the company’s internal messaging system, with about 100 participants, including specialized cryptocurrency tracers and security personnel.They eventually transitioned to a mass conference call, with 100 boxes on the screen, where employees took turns muting and then unmuting, communicating in a mixture of English and Chinese.Among them was He Yi, Binance’s co-chief executive, who is seven months pregnant, and worked through the night from her base in Abu Dhabi, taking a call at 3 a.m.

local time.Ms.He and her colleagues were navigating one of the most damaging crises in Binance’s long and troubled history.

A team of North Korean hackers had penetrated the exchange analysts said, and drained more than $6 billion in the largest crypto heist of all time.Binance was forced to halt deposits and withdrawals, and posted a series of frantic messages on X, promising that it would cover any losses.It was a surreal situation made even more surreal by the actions of Binance’s founder, Changpeng Zhao, who spent the evening narrating the events to his 12.9 million followers on X.

He posted prayer hand emojis, publicly jousted with the site’s owner, Elon Musk, and insisted that “user funds are SAFU” — using a bit of crypto slang to reassure customers that hundreds of millions of dollars in deposits would not simply vanish into thin air.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.If you are in Reader mode please exit and log in...