Source: deVere Group
October 30 2026
The $6.3 billion Binance hack opens a new chapter in the fight to protect wealth, with AI handing criminals the speed to empty an exchange in minutes, warns the CEO of deVere Group[1], one of the world’s largest independent financial advisory organisations.
The comments from Nigel Green come as Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, reveals a breach with an estimated impact of $6.3 billion, traced in its initial investigation to a single DevOps engineer’s laptop.
He says: “Six billion dollars moved in about 20 minutes, through one engineer’s laptop. Bitcoin’s code was never touched.[2]
“We’ve entered a new phase in protecting wealth. AI lets attackers plan and strike at machine speed, so the defences around money have to move just as fast, at exchanges, at banks and for anyone holding assets themselves.
“Any financial firm still treating security as an IT budget line is going to get found out.”
Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs says around $6.36 billion was moved across 10 blockchains. It links the attack to a hacking group backed by North Korea.
About $3 billion has since been frozen. Tether has locked more than $1.5 billion in USDT and Circle more than $800 million in USDC, while Ripple has helped halt around $200 million.
The previous record crypto theft, roughly $1.5 billion at Bybit, came in 2025.
Bitcoin drops more than 4% to below $78,000 as the news spreads.
Binance has pledged to cover all losses through its Secure Asset Fund for Users and company money. Analysts estimate the fund, worth around $1.2 billion, could cover roughly a third of the assets still unfrozen.
Nigel Green says: “Binance says it’ll cover every cent. I hope so. The emergency fund is around $1.2 billion and the gap is several times bigger, so the rest has to come from the company’s own balance sheet.
“The market will want to see the numbers, and the new proof of reserves can’t come soon enough.”
The deVere CEO turns to what the breach means for people holding digital assets.
“The whole point of Bitcoin is that you hold it, rather than a third party holding it for you. Leaving large sums sitting on an exchange hands that control straight back.
“Long term holders have just been reminded, very expensively, why keys kept offline matter.”
The breach caps what has been dubbed Black October, a month of high profile cyber intrusions, data leaks and bugs uncovered by AI tools.
Nigel Green says: “Crypto has spent years pushing back against heavy regulation, and plenty of those arguments were fair. This one’s harder to argue with.
“Platforms holding billions of other people’s money need enforceable security standards. I expect regulators in the US, Europe and Asia will likely move faster after this week.”
He adds that the pressure will reach well beyond crypto, with banks, payment firms and asset managers facing the same questions from regulators, shareholders and the public.
“Banks shouldn’t be watching this thinking it’s a crypto problem. Every institution has engineers with laptops and access to systems that move money.”
Nigel Green remains bullish on Bitcoin.
He concludes: “Bitcoin has shrugged off bigger blows than this. A compromised laptop at one exchange says nothing about the network itself, and I’d expect this sell off to likely look like a blip a few months from now.
“Crises like this tend to raise the bar for everyone. After this week, security will be the first question asked of every platform, and frankly it’s overdue.”
deVere Group is one of the world’s largest independent advisors of specialist global financial solutions to international, local mass affluent, and high-net-worth clients. It has a network of offices around the world, more than 80,000 clients, and $14bn under advisement.