Binance hack: 28,316 BTC outfllows as futures bets hold

Bitcoin holders pulled roughly 28,316 BTC in net outflows from wallets tied to Binance in the days after the exchange’s $6.34 billion breach on Oct. 29, according to a Santiment report covered by crypto.news. The same data showed Bitcoin’s social commentary turning heavily negative while leveraged traders kept billions of dollars in futures positions open.

Exchange balances fall while derivatives hold steady

Santiment’s Nov. 6 report tracked exchange flows, social commentary and derivatives activity after the theft and found the reaction split between spot holdings and leveraged positions. On Oct. 29, its readings showed 22,317 BTC and roughly 324,640 ETH in net exchange outflows. Those numbers cover all tracked exchange activity, including customer withdrawals and institutional transfers, and are not a count of stolen assets.

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Across every exchange Santiment monitors, Bitcoin balances dropped by 38,631 BTC, or 2.92%, between Oct. 25 and Nov. 5. Because that decline began four days before the breach, the firm cautioned against pinning the whole move on Binance.

Stablecoin flows told a similar story. Santiment logged about 1.71 billion USDT in net exchange outflows on Ethereum on Oct. 29, then a larger 3.94 billion reading on Nov. 2, after Binance began reopening withdrawals. The firm said the figures do not establish that all of those coins were stolen or came from Binance.

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Coinpedia’s account, citing CryptoQuant data, put the Nov. 1–2 withdrawal wave at 25,793 BTC and described it as the year’s biggest single-day outflows across BTC, ETH, USDT and USDC. That report also said ETH, USDT and USDC had flipped back to net inflows by Nov. 3, and BTC exchange reserves slipped from 2.85 million to 2.83 million BTC.

Social fear outruns trading fear

Binance held all six slots on Santiment’s list of top trending crypto stories on Oct. 29, pushing aside talk of the Federal Reserve, Strategy and the approaching U.S. midterms. Negative sentiment did not translate into a broad retreat from derivatives. Santiment described the reduction in Binance futures positions as relatively orderly given the size of the security failure, and noted that Bitcoin funding rates stayed mostly positive and within normal ranges — a sign traders were not collectively leaning hard bearish.

Coinpedia reported a different derivative signal: Binance’s BTC funding rate reached 0.01, its highest in more than two months, against a 30-day simple moving average of about 0.004557. Positive funding means longs pay shorts, so bullish positioning had become costlier. Coinpedia noted that crowded longs can invite liquidations if prices drop.

BNB spot activity spiked first. Volume on Oct. 29 hit $3.78 billion, the highest daily level since Feb. 5, and BNB futures open interest reached about $427 million with the token near $692 at the time of the report.

ENA withdrawal spike and attacker conversion

Ethena’s ENA stood out for the breadth of withdrawal activity: 169 addresses in one hour on Oct. 29, versus roughly 20–25 in adjacent hours, with 208.62 million ENA in net outflows that day. Santiment separately cited about 217.5 million ENA — worth roughly $40 million at the time — stolen and converted into Ethereum through decentralized trading platforms. The two figures measure different things, with the exchange-flow reading covering net movements across tracked wallets. Santiment noted that ENA has no issuer-controlled freeze mechanism comparable to those available for USDT and USDC.

Why it matters

The split between heavy spot withdrawals and stable futures exposure suggests users treated the breach as a reason to move coins off Binance rather than to bet against the market. For traders, that leaves positions exposed if sentiment and prices diverge further. For the exchange, the test is whether replenished reserves and staged withdrawal reopenings are enough to bring balances back.

What to watch

Binance said in its Nov. 4 update that it had replaced about 98% of affected assets with company resources, with the rest being bought through markets and over-the-counter channels. Its new reserve snapshot covered 44 tokens, up from 10, and Binance estimated the accompanying zero-knowledge proof would take 50–60 hours. The exchange has also asked Arbitrum’s DAO for 8,425.997 ETH and 74.56 million ARB it says were frozen, estimating about 49 days for discussion, voting and execution. How much of that process completes will shape whether the outflows reverse.

This article is not financial advice; crypto markets are volatile and uncertain.

Sources: crypto.news, Coinpedia