By Tyler Warner
7 min read
Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. And check out our daily news show 'FOMO HOUR' covering all of the top stories and market action.
GM!
Today’s top news:
Someone stole about $6.4 billion from Binance. That is, by a wide margin, the biggest crypto theft that has ever happened, four times the $1.5 billion taken from Bybit in February 2025.
The money left across three different blockchains: roughly $3.5 billion in ETH, $1.4 billion in BTC, and $630 million on Tron (final accounting still underway).
Luckily, stablecoin issuers can freeze their own tokens; it’s a kill switch built into USDT and USDC. Tether and Circle used it, locking up about $2.39 billion between them. That’s 43% of the haul. That leaves somewhere between $2.6 and $3.2 billion still out there.
Aave also stepped in, freezing its V3 and V4 markets on Ethereum. That’s precautionary, given the worry is an attacker using stolen money to borrow against and leave the protocol holding bad debt.
As this was playing out, Binance stated it’s “aware of reports of a potential security issue” and that user funds are “completely safe,” and paused withdrawals on multiple networks. The clearest comment came from CZ, who no longer runs Binance but is its largest shareholder: it “does look like a hack,” and he expects user funds to be “fully covered.” Later in the evening, Binance announced that it has reserved over $6.34B in company funds to cover losses. So funds are indeed “safu.”
ZachXBT shared that the Binance hack funds were commingled with funds from the $388M Bitget exploit, leading him to believe it’s the same hacker group out of North Korea behind the attack. As for how it happened, Binance pointed to a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop which was compromised, allowing the attacks to submit the unauthorized transactions, before identifying "additional points of breach" in the following hours.
Markets did what you’d expect. Bitcoin fell below $797,000, ETH fell sub-$2,200 and BNB sub-$700. Over $1.33B in positions got liquidated on the day.
Unfortunately, this came after what was shaping up to be one of the most positive days for a crypto project in its history.
Earlier on Thursday, Trade.xyz announced that Intercontinental Exchange (the company that owns the New York Stock Exchange) is investing in it. The plan is a regulated U.S. venue offering round-the-clock perpetual futures built on Hyperliquid: stocks, indices, commodities, currencies and crypto, with its own exchange and clearing setup, pending CFTC approval.
Stanley Druckenmiller is joining as well, the first of a small group of outside market figures. He already owns the trade; his family office disclosed a $23 million position in Hyperliquid Strategies earlier this year.
So Hyperliquid has its path to a fully regulated perps offering inside the U.S., claims Stanley Druckenmiller as an investor (and a tout on X), and ICE’s CEO said that Hyperliquid was “bigger than NASDAQ.” Doesn’t get much better than that.
HYPE shot as high as $97 on the day, up more than 20% at peak, before falling to $89 in the Binance hack aftermath. As of this morning, it’s at $93 and still up 8% on the day.
Unfortunately, now we have to deal with the Binance hack aftermath. Hyperliquid is a likely winner as a primary DEX option vs CEXs like Binance (which will likely be less trusted now.) But there’s also a good chance of the entire market being dragged down by fears of more exploits looming.
We will find out soon enough. Expect a bumpy ride…
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