Bitcoin drops below $77 000 as Binance hack shakes crypto

Bitcoin sank below $77 000 for the first time in more than a month, deepening a selloff after Binance Holdings revealed a record hack that rattled the crypto industry and renewed questions about the security of customer assets — even at the world’s largest digital-asset exchange.

The original cryptocurrency declined as much as 3.1% on Friday to fall as low as $76 300. Other tokens, including some that were impacted by the security breach, also fell. Binance’s BNB token has declined about 5% over the past 24 hours to around $700.

The breach — in which attackers siphoned off over $6 billion — is the largest crypto theft on record, and delivers another blow to an industry that has spent years trying to shed its reputation for hacks, scams and exchange failures. It’s also putting Binance’s own defences under scrutiny by raising questions about how an exchange of its size — with more than $135 billion of assets on its platform — could have succumbed to a breach of such magnitude.

Binance on Friday said that it has reserved $6.34 billion of company funds in the wake of the incident.

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“The broader crypto market was already leaning bearish, which is why the selloff spread so quickly across the board,” said Jeff Ko, chief analyst at ViaBTC. He added that Binance can absorb the losses.

Bitcoin and other tokens were already under pressure this week with broader macro forces weighing on the market. Futures contracts for the tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 were down 2.4% ahead of the open following disappointing earnings reports from the likes of Amazon.com and Intel Corp.

Bitcoin had hovered around $80 000 for much of the week. However, a Friday expiry of $11 billion worth of options on the platform Deribit loomed over the market, adding to the broader risk-off mood. About $1.3 billion worth of bullish positions on cryptocurrencies were wiped out in a 24-hour period, according to Coinglass data.

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“The downside is the series of body blows to crypto infrastructure over recent months could dissuade market entrants,” said Noelle Acheson, who writes the Crypto is Macro Now newsletter. “We’ve seen that self-custody isn’t safe, exchange custody isn’t safe, and the swarm of AI bot attacks on security in all online applications is going to make everyone even more nervous.”

The upside, however, is that “every new security breach does make security stronger,” she added.

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