UNI Falls 8.89% as Long and Short Positions Worth 7.02 Million Units Are Liquidated

Key Facts

UNI fell 8.89% in four hours to $6.70 on Binance at 5:10 p.m. Eastern time on October 29, while its 24-hour decline reached 8.28%, according to TokenPost. Long positions in the token recorded liquidations worth $1.89 million over one hour across Binance, Bybit and OKX, while no short positions were liquidated during the same period. In EL7 closing data, the token ended trading on October 28 at $7.251, then closed on October 29 at $6.471. The close rose to $6.735 on October 30. The moves coincided with reports of sales of assets linked to a Binance security incident, though the sources did not establish that the sales caused UNI’s decline.

Bloomingbit coverage said the entity it described as the attacker sold 7.02 million UNI at about $5.65 per token, receiving approximately $39.63 million on October 29. UNI was the largest sale among the 7 assets cited in the coverage. The other assets included ENA, whose sales totaled $33.93 million, PEPE at $31.66 million, and LINK at $26.05 million. AAVE sales brought in about $14.27 million, ONDO about $6.62 million, and WLD about $6.09 million. These sales put UNI first among the assets mentioned by value sold, but do not establish its individual effect on the token’s price.

According to a risk disclosure published by Aave, a Binance hot wallet on the Ethereum network sent about 63 tokens and 167,464 ETH to a single address in one transaction at 20:24 UTC on October 29. Binance said in an update published on October 30 that the incident’s estimated total impact was about $6.3 billion. It added that it had worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, and that the value frozen on-chain had reached about $3 billion by that update. This estimate gives a broader picture of the incident’s scale than the value of UNI sales alone. Binance’s update did not say those sales caused the token’s recorded decline.

Binance said its initial investigation indicated that a DevOps engineer’s compromised laptop may have been involved, allowing the attacker to access a service container and send unauthorized withdrawal transactions. It added that it had found no evidence of a wallet private key being leaked. The exchange temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while conducting security checks, and revoked the affected address’s authorization. It also said it had engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace the funds and work to recover them. In its statement on the keys, Binance said: "We have found no evidence of a wallet private key being leaked."

Binance said it would cover losses from the SAFU fund and company funds, and said user funds were safe. It added that it would publish a proof-of-reserves update after remediation was complete. The exchange said: "Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and company funds. User funds are safe." It also pledged to publish a detailed technical review after the investigation was complete and the facts had been fully verified. According to its statement, that review remains a later step in its response to the incident, alongside efforts to trace and recover the assets.

Against the broader market backdrop, Bitcoin fell 3.2% to below $79,000 on the evening of Thursday, October 29, as news of the Binance incident spread, according to the Associated Press. This places UNI’s decline within a session that also saw a drop in the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. Earlier, Bybit was hacked in February 2025, with losses of $1.5 billion, and the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said North Korea and the TraderTraitor group were responsible. This provides a precedent for major security incidents at cryptocurrency exchanges, though the details and parties linked to the two incidents differ. The available facts do not include a direct comparison of the incidents’ effects on asset prices.

Over a longer horizon, Standard Chartered set UNI price targets of $6.50 by the end of 2026, $20 by the end of 2027, $40 by the end of 2028, $65 by the end of 2029, and $100 by the end of 2030. The Block published these estimates in its coverage of the note, and they are interim targets that do not explain price action during the October session. The thesis is based on the expectation that the value of active tokenized assets in decentralized finance will grow about 37-fold through the end of 2030, potentially increasing the assets available for trading in Uniswap pools. The note expects on-chain tokenized assets to rise from about $340 billion to $4 trillion by the end of 2028. It also expects the share of these assets used in decentralized finance to increase from 3.5% to 30% by the end of 2030, potentially lifting the sector’s locked assets to about $2.7 trillion, or 37 times the current level cited in the forecast.

In a development related to Uniswap’s product, the company announced on October 22 that Aggregator Hooks were available on the Ethereum, Base and Robinhood Chain mainnets. It said the seven liquidity sources available at launch cover more than 90% of decentralized trading activity on these networks. It explained that swaps routed through external liquidity sources pay protocol fees that contribute to UNI burns. This mechanism links the use of external liquidity sources to protocol fees and token burns, while Standard Chartered’s targets remain tied to its forecasts for tokenized asset and decentralized finance growth through the end of 2030. Binance said it would publish the incident’s technical review after the investigation was complete and the facts had been verified.