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binance hack
following $700 million through the blockchain
npcsignals | research note | 30 october 2026
the reported binance incident of 29 october produced an estimated multichain loss of roughly $6.3 billion in external reporting. that estimate is not a number independently established by this investigation.
our scope is narrower: what can be documented from one ethereum trail?
blockscout recorded a 167,464.247856558836135296 eth internal transfer and 63 token-transfer events from a binance-labelled address during the main sweep. an explorer label is not proof of beneficial ownership. the incident’s authorization mechanism and ultimate attribution are not independently resolved here.
we followed the canonical ethereum usdt contract, rather than relying on token names. the first visible transfers of 500 million and 200 million usdt were matched to transaction receipts and transfer logs returned by two public ethereum rpc endpoints. the two receiving addresses then distributed the same 700 million through 19 positive downstream events to 15 recipient addresses, according to the retained explorer ledger. later transfers represent movement of those funds, not additional losses.
four selected third-hop transfers totaling 365 million usdt were also matched through two rpc…
