$643.2 Million Exits Bitcoin Funds in Biggest Daily Outflow Since June
Key Facts
U.S. spot Bitcoin funds recorded net outflows of $643.2 million on Friday, October 30, their largest daily outflow since June 25, according to Farside Investors data reported by Crypto Watch Desk. The outflow came in the first full U.S. session after the hack of Binance’s hot wallets, which the platform said occurred at around 20:05 UTC on October 29. Binance estimated the value of the lost tokenized assets at about $6.3 billion. The fund figures alone do not prove that the hack caused the outflows, but they place them in the context of a session that saw a large exit from Bitcoin-linked investment vehicles. In the spot market, Bitcoin closed at $77,368.77 on October 30, compared with $77,991.89 the previous day, according to EL7 data.
Five funds led the outflow, headed by BlackRock’s IBIT with $233.7 million in withdrawals, followed by Fidelity’s FBTC with outflows of $201.0 million. ARKB recorded $129.5 million in outflows, while GBTC saw about $53.3 million leave. Bitwise’s BITB lost about $25.7 million. The remaining Bitcoin funds recorded no net flows during the session, according to data Farside Investors provided to Crypto Watch Desk. The figures spread the outflow across five funds rather than concentrating it in one.
For the week ended October 30, Bitcoin funds recorded net outflows of $202.4 million. The negative weekly total followed $440.8 million in inflows during the first four sessions, from October 26 to 29. Friday’s outflow erased the week’s earlier net inflows, while remaining smaller than the final session’s total outflow. The large withdrawal also ended a brief run in which October’s total had returned to positive territory on Wednesday. The month closed with net outflows of $515.9 million, according to Farside Investors data reported by Crypto Watch Desk.
Outflows extended to Ether funds, which lost $155.7 million on October 30, marking a fifth consecutive session of withdrawals. Their net outflows for October totaled $1,607.2 million, according to Farside Investors data reported by Crypto Watch Desk. In the broader market, The Associated Press reported that Bitcoin fell 3.2% on the evening of October 29 to below $79,000. But the BTCUSD close recorded by EL7 on October 30 was $77,368.77, compared with $77,991.89 on October 29. These price moves provided context alongside the fund flows, without by themselves establishing investors’ motives.
Binance said in its initial update that the hack may have involved a laptop belonging to an engineer on its DevOps team, adding that it had found no evidence that wallet private keys had been leaked. The company said it had worked with blockchain partners to freeze about $3 billion of the affected assets on-chain as of its October 30 update. In its statement, it said user losses would be covered by the SAFU fund and company funds, and that user funds were safe. Binance then said in an October 31 update that it had allocated more than $6.34 billion in company funds to cover the losses, and that the coverage rate had reached 90%. It added that the ten currencies mentioned in the update, including BTC, ETH, USDT, BNB and SOL, were fully backed at 100%.
On the source of the attack, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation attributed the operation to malicious cyber activity by the North Korea-linked group TraderTraitor, according to The Associated Press. The bureau asked trading platforms and blockchain analytics companies to block transactions linked to specified addresses. Binance said the assets not yet covered accounted for 10% of the total affected assets, and that it would continue buying them through the market and over-the-counter channels. The company estimated that a full proof of reserves could become available by November 3. That date provides the next timeline marker in the coverage and reserves updates announced by the platform.
In a separate update issued on November 1, Binance said it was preparing to resume the first phase of withdrawals between 06:00 and 09:00 UTC, with service to be restored gradually after security and readiness checks were completed. It said deposits remained open and were unaffected by the incident as it prepared to resume withdrawals in stages. The company tied the start time of the first phase to a specific window in its update. This followed its announcement the previous day that coverage of the affected assets had reached 90%. The date it cited for making a full proof of reserves available is November 3, according to its published estimate.