Hacker News
points by scrlk 6 hours ago | 0 comments
Their insurance fund (SAFU) is completely wiped out, it's only $1 billion in BTC: https://www.binance.com/en/academy/glossary/secure-asset-fun...

The name of the fund was originally inspired by this meme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DelF6zEHXpE

FWIW, at the end of every crypto bear market, a CEX usually blows up (eg FTX)...

[–] thewanderer1983 3 hours ago
Top post on /r/cryptocurrency Good to see all these organic posts across social media.

MelangeBot OP • 2h ago Their insurance fund (SAFU) is completely wiped out, it's only $1 billion in BTC

The name of the fund was originally inspired by this meme

FWIW, at the end of every crypto bear market, a CEX usually blows up (eg FTX)...

[–] N_Lens 3 hours ago
Dead internet
[–] randysalami 53 minutes ago
I’m sorry to say this is not dead internet.
[–] SecretDreams 1 hour ago
Don't worry, we're well moderated and free of bots here.
[–] N_Lens 11 minutes ago
[X] Doubt
[–] huey77 3 hours ago
Came back here to see if i was seeing double
[–] schleck8 6 hours ago
> As of 2026, the SAFU fund comprises crypto assets valued at approximately US$1 billion, held entirely in Bitcoin

And decreasing, since BTC is dropping as we speak. Always a good idea to hedge a currency with the currency itsself

[–] echoangle 5 hours ago
> And decreasing, since BTC is dropping as we speak. Always a good idea to hedge a currency with the currency itsself

Depends on what you’re insuring, no? For theft, it actually makes senses, right? That way, you’re insuring a constant number of coins, no matter what the market is doing. If you’re insurance currency would tank during a bitcoin heist, you would lose the insurance effect.

[–] miohtama 4 hours ago
Stablecoins are frozen so the hole will likely be around two billion dollars.

Binance has equity and cash flow cover this, outside the insurance fund.

They custody $150B.

FTX was larger in dollar terms and ecosystem was smaller back in a day.

[–] rootedbox 4 hours ago
This might sound good.. but freezing currencies is bad. It evaporates trust of liquidity from whoever is doing governance. It's part of the reason why the bond market is doing what its doing lately and why countries are on-shoring gold reserves.
[–] fragsworth 1 hour ago
That sounds kind of ideal, but I feel like their actions might have been justifiable.

If a massive heist like this triggered a run on one of the largest exchanges (Binance), potentially leading to a liquidity crisis, the consequences for the ecosystem could be far worse than temporarily freezing specific addresses holding stolen stablecoins.

Not saying that's what would have happened, but it seemed like a real possibility. And I'm not saying freezing assets is good in general, but in this particular case, maybe it was the lesser evil.

[–] idiotsecant 19 minutes ago
No. Permissioned cryptocurrency is all the horrible parts of cash and all the horrible parts of crypto put together with none of the advantages of either.

I want crypto because I don't trust nation states with the leverage and dials of fiat currency. All we've done is replace government with trusting whoever made a particular stablecoin.

Permissionless crypto is the only real crypto.

[–] dboreham 2 minutes ago
All cryptocurrency is permissioned. This is because governments can make it illegal for someone to turn your cryptocurrency into real currency. You need their permission to turn it into pizzas and yachts.
[–] paulpauper 4 hours ago
governments freeze currency all the time.
[–] nradov 3 hours ago
Only the shithole countries freeze currency trading. That doesn't happen with actual reserve fiat currencies.
[–] mirashii 3 hours ago
The primary reserve currency does it all the time. https://ofacblockedfundslawyers.com/us-sanctions-freeze-doll...
[–] nradov 2 hours ago
That's different. They freeze individual accounts subject to legal orders. They don't freeze the whole currency.
[–] platinumrad 2 hours ago
Is that not what is happening here?
[–] idiotsecant 18 minutes ago
You literally made a reply to a person making this exact point ...
[–] Forgeties79 1 hour ago
> Only the shithole countries

Seriously?

[–] tarpitt 3 hours ago
Well maybe it could happen with actual reserve currencies, but it certainly doesn't happen with platinum level, diamond tier luxury fiat currencies.

Oh you didn't know? I bet you trade in "dollars". That's cute.

[–] lazide 3 hours ago
Name one anyone trusts.
[–] cyanydeez 3 hours ago
definitely not the ones I keep track of, eh.
[–] weakened_malloc 3 hours ago
they borrowed ETH against the stablecoins on AAVE before they were frozen
[–] pigeons 1 hour ago
Doesn't matter how much they custody!
[–] jazzyjackson 3 hours ago
Uh don’t you not want to cover losses with customer funds?
[–] pbhjpbhj 1 hour ago
Put some pyramid in that blockchain?!
[–] ahartmetz 1 hour ago
Recursive pyramids!
[–] anonymous908213 6 hours ago
> Changpeng Zhao (CZ), former CEO of Binance, tweeted "Funds are safe"

Seems like the issue here is that he became former CEO. Funds are not safu without him...

[–] razodactyl 4 hours ago
Wait. How does the insurance fund run significantly lower than the primary?
[–] computerfriend 1 hour ago
Fractional reserve banking but for Bitcoin.
[–] lxgr 6 hours ago
Do you mean bull market?
[–] scrlk 6 hours ago
It's a (weak) bear market capitulation signal - max fear when people think everything is broken.
[–] incompatible 4 hours ago
It seems like bitcoin, currently 78719, was only 58526 on 30 June. That's 34.5% up in four months, meeting the definition of bull market.
[–] kimixa 4 hours ago
Bitcoin is volatile enough you can cherry-pick pretty much any %age you want based on the dates you choose. Which you seem to have done here - "happening" to choose the day with the lowest single day value in the last 3 years for your comparison point.

For another narrative, it was 83,038 a month ago on Sept 29th, so is down 5% in one month. And one year ago it was 112,562 on Oct 29th 2025 - down over 30% in one year. Well into "bear market" territory.

Using "traditional" market indicators and definitions for things like bear/bull markets doesn't feel sensible for such a volatile market.

[–] incompatible 3 hours ago
Fine, but the comment "It's a (weak) bear market capitulation signal" is inapplicable, either because defining bear/bull markets doesn't feel sensible, or because it's not currently in the capitulation stage of a bear market, but some way off the bottom.
[–] paulpauper 4 hours ago
it will be sub 50k soon probably. a weak rebound already losing air
[–] paulpauper 4 hours ago
already over. a tiny bounce after falling 55%
[–] Cyclone_ 5 hours ago
But when FTX blew up crypto went down even further..
[–] koolba 5 hours ago
You mean FTX?
[–] Cyclone_ 5 hours ago
Yes, typo.
[–] paulpauper 4 hours ago
much more was at risk as a percentage of market size, market was in worse shape,
[–] nullc 3 hours ago
Though in that case the crash was directly due to "effectively altruist" SBF fraudulently dumping customer assets in a half-brained and presumably stimulant-addled attempt to manipulate the market and reduce his liabilities.

Not making any market predictions here-- just saying that it's probably not that useful to generalize from that event.

[–] Cyclone_ 2 hours ago
I think the point is more that when something bad happens in markets it creates fear, which generally leads to downturns (for at least some time).
[–] dist-epoch 5 hours ago
The insurance fund is not for covering hacks.

Binance is making so much money, covering this hack is peanuts for them.

[–] thechairman12 5 hours ago
Not to be too pedantic, but with some napkin math, I don't think this is true. Looking for clarification!!

I downloaded Binance's self published market data (https://data.binance.vision/), calculated spot and futures volume for the past year, and then applied their *highest fee tier* on both sides of the volume (for every $1 traded, they generate a fee on the taker and the maker. the fee rate is asymmetrical).

Spot revenue worked out to $7.6B USD, perps revenue worked out to $13.8B

This is an upper bound on the fees charged on volume. Binance also scams their users with a b-book, has DMM deals, etc.

I don't want to get into all that today.

But the final result is that they print somewhere in the range of $20B per year on fees. I guess CZ also has huge stockpiles of BTC and stuff. A 1% rise in BTC price probably means more for them than their actual fees, LOL.

All this to say, I think $5.6B significantly hurts.

See Google's stock price today. Their ads business slowed down a bit, and their stock tanked 10%. If binance was publicly traded, I imagine a similar affect would be demonstrated on their price.

[–] yreg 5 hours ago
How much money do you think they are making? Because I really doubt this is peanuts to them.
[–] throw-qqqqq 4 hours ago
Binance has a market cap just shy of $100B, so a $5.8B sure hurts, but it’s not a showstopper I’d say.
[–] grey-area 4 hours ago
A market cap predicated on the price of bitcoin. A market cap is not funds available, it's just the valuation of the market, which is fickle.
[–] gizajob 47 minutes ago
Market cap has nothing to do with free cash to absorb a $6billion loss. Money is also going to pour out of Binance now, one would imagine.
[–] antonvs 7 minutes ago
That $100 billion is exchange holdings, i.e. customer funds, not market cap. It would be highly illegal for Binance to use any of that $100 billion to cover this loss.
[–] 12_throw_away 1 hour ago
boss: did you just send $5B of our company's liquid capital to a nigerian prince?

me: no worries boss, our market cap is $100B

boss (who is also the tooth fairy): oh right cool np

[–] basilgohar 2 hours ago
It really hurts when there's this much misunderstanding of market cap vs. revenue. P/E ratios exist for a reason.
[–] thatguy0900 2 hours ago
That's assuming these AI hacks stop, right? Why would they, ever?