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Following the hack of $40 million worth of Bitcoin at Binance, users are not able to withdrawal or deposit their funds. When will Binance allow users to take their funds of the exchange again?
When will deposits and withdrawals open?
Binance has suspended all deposits and withdrawals as they have to conduct a thorough security review that will 'include all parts of our systems and data, which is large'. The current estimation of the exchange is that it will take about one week before deposits and withdrawals will be open again.
Will trading continue on Binance?
Trading will continue during this period, although Binance is warning users that 'hackers may still control certain user accounts and may use those to influence prices in the meantime. But we believe with withdrawals disabled, there isn’t much incentive for hackers to influence markets.'
In an AMA following the hack, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said that there trading may be disabled for small periods of time during this week. 'There are a few system upgrades we have to do this week. There may be small periods of time where we have to hold trading for a couple of hours here and there for some of the core system upgrades, because we actually do need to make some changes in the system.'
'Did I lose my BTC?'
The $40 million worth of Bitcoin is lost, although other exchanges try to prevent the hackers to cash out their stolen BTC by tracking where the funds are going. Users won't be affected however. Binance will compensate the affected users from the SAFU fund, a fund that is specifically created to deal with situations such as this.
The hack
The hack took place at May 7, around 5PM UTC. According to the statement of Binance, attackers were able to obtain a large number of API keys, 2FA codes and other types of info through phishing, viruses and other attacks. This led to 7074BTC being moved out of the Binance hot wallet in this transaction.
In a statement, Binance said: The hackers had the patience to wait, and execute well-orchestrated actions through multiple seemingly independent accounts at the most opportune time. The transaction is structured in a way that passed our existing security checks. It was unfortunate that we were not able to block this withdrawal before it was executed. Once executed, the withdrawal triggered various alarms in our system. We stopped all withdrawals immediately after that.