Bitcoin stolen in Binance hack is likely ‘gone,’ Ballet says

The Bitcoin stolen in the hack of Binance’s crypto exchange will probably be impossible to recover, according to Bobby Lee, founder of digital-asset hardware wallet company Ballet Global.

“That’s gone,” Lee said in a Bloomberg Television interview on Friday. “The Bitcoin that’s lost, that’s all gone out into the hackers’ hands.”

The world’s largest crypto exchange estimated that the heist — described by the industry as the biggest to hit digital assets — impacted $6.3 billion of assets. Binance has temporarily suspended all deposits and withdrawals and pledged to cover any losses.

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The exchange said about $3 billion of the assets have been frozen so far. Lee said only stablecoins stood a realistic chance of being recovered.

“Freezing it is different from recovery,” he said, adding that Binance faces the lengthy process of working with law enforcement to investigate the incident and formally claim the frozen assets.

Bitcoin avoided a pronounced selloff in Asian trading on Friday, falling less than 1% to $78,269 as of 1:03 p.m. in Hong Kong.

In prior years, digital tokens might have plunged after this type of hack, but now the crypto “market has really matured a lot,” Lee said.

“If you look at the grand scheme of things, there are trillions of dollars in crypto. So having, you know, a billion or two, or $5 billion lost in a hack, is not the end of the world.”

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