Binance Suffers Crypto’s Biggest Theft, Hong Kong Opens Fund Trading, and Nasdaq Pushes Back

Thursday handed crypto its largest theft on record, and Friday has mostly gone on counting what can still be clawed back.

The 2 stories underneath it are both fights over who gets to trade what, and they are pulling in opposite directions.

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Market-Moving News

One story is going to own your feed all weekend, so here is what holds up and what is still guesswork.

We follow that up with two that flatly disagree with each other. A regulator opening the door to fund shares changing hands at 3 am, and a stock exchange watching its own listed companies slam a different one shut.

Security

Binance Sets Aside $6.34B After Record $6.3B Crypto Hack

Binance has set aside more than $6.34 billion in company funds to cover losses from a roughly $6.3 billion hack, with $5 billion already held in the same tokens stolen from the exchange.

The recovery allocation excludes approximately $3 billion in stolen assets frozen with industry partners, keeping Binance's own replacement funding separate from money it is still trying to recover.

Company Funds Back the Recovery Plan

Binance is buying the remaining affected tokens through market and over-the-counter transactions so the replacement assets match what was taken.

Some purchases could take longer because smaller tokens have limited trading liquidity and private transactions require settlement.

The exchange says it will use company resources to cover confirmed shortfalls and publicly verify backing through its proof-of-reserves reporting.

Withdrawals Remain the Next Test

Withdrawals remain paused while Binance completes security checks, although deposits are operating normally. The exchange has said it expects withdrawals to resume within roughly 48 hours.

Investigators have also uncovered additional breach points beyond the initially suspected compromised employee laptop, leaving the full attack path unresolved.

Take: Committing billions to replace stolen tokens gives Binance a concrete recovery plan, but replacing assets is only part of protecting customers.

Even with replacement tokens available, you still depend on the exchange restoring safe withdrawals before those assets can move off the platform.

Binance's response now has to demonstrate both adequate backing and control over the systems that allowed the theft.

DeFi

Chainlink Launches Weekend Pricing for Tokenized Assets With Aave as Launch Partner

Chainlink has launched Chainlink 24/7, a pricing service that keeps reference prices for tokenized stocks, commodities, and other traditional assets updating through weekends and holidays.

Aave is the official launch partner, and the technology will support stock-backed loans through its institutional lending platform, Horizon.

Blockchain Lending Continues After Exchanges Close

Blockchain markets operate continuously, while stock exchanges follow fixed schedules. Lending platforms still need to assess collateral during closures, especially when price swings could put loans at risk.

During open sessions, Chainlink uses regular and extended-hours market data.

When traditional exchanges close, it switches to quotes from multiple perpetual futures venues and combines those inputs into a continuous reference price.

Continuous Pricing Still Requires Careful Risk Controls

Those off-hours prices reflect derivatives trading, not transactions on a closed stock exchange. Their usefulness still depends on the quality and liquidity of the markets supplying them.

Chainlink says the service is live, while Aave describes its stock-backed loan offering as coming soon. The pricing launch and lending rollout therefore remain separate milestones.

Take: Reliable weekend lending needs more than a token that can move around the clock. Borrowing against tokenized shares exposes you to changing collateral values even when the stock exchange is closed.

Chainlink addresses the pricing gap, while lending platforms remain responsible for deciding how much borrowing those prices can safely support.

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Regulation

Coinbase's 14-Token Conversion Deadline Arrives for European Customers

Coinbase's October 30 deadline has arrived for European retail customers holding 14 restricted crypto assets, with remaining balances scheduled for automatic conversion under the exchange's compliance policy.

The affected tokens include Tether's USDT, PayPal's PYUSD, World Liberty Financial's USD1, DAI, and USDS. Customers who want to keep those assets must withdraw them to supported external wallets.

Remaining Balances Face a Different Destination

Coinbase says the one-time conversion will use market prices, directing balances into USDC where suitable or another supported asset or currency when necessary.

Coinbase has already restricted purchases, sales, and conversions involving the affected tokens. The notice applies to retail customers in the European Economic Area, where Coinbase says it cannot support the assets under the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets rules.

Late Deposits Could Become Difficult to Recover

Affected tokens sent after the deadline will not be credited to customer accounts or included in the conversion.

Coinbase says recovery may be possible through its unsupported-asset process, but availability depends on the token and network.

The exchange has not disclosed the value of affected holdings, and its published schedule does not confirm that every conversion has finished.

Take: A stablecoin can keep trading globally while becoming unavailable through a regulated regional account. Once the conversion runs, you hold the replacement asset even without submitting a trade.

Coinbase's deadline shows how compliance rules can change holdings directly, with possible tax consequences alongside reduced token choice.

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Future Forward

A jobs print, a national vote, and a very large conference.

Economic Data:

📈 October payrolls land Friday, November 6, at 8:30 am ET. Another read on employment and what the Fed does about it. Crypto has been taking its cues from tech stocks for weeks now, so this one gets priced on both screens.

Politics:

🗳️ US midterms on Tuesday. The market-structure bill died on a cloture vote in September, and whoever turns up in the next Congress decides whether it gets another swing or whether the agencies keep doing the job by hand.

Conferences:

🎤 Web Summit opens November 9 in Lisbon, running through the 12th. Not a crypto conference, which is rather the point, since the announcements moving this market lately come from companies that would be mortified to be called one.

Crypto Know-How: Why Billions Got Frozen, and the Bitcoin Did Not

A stablecoin has a company standing behind it. Tether and Circle issue tokens built to hold a dollar of value, backed by reserves, and the contract tracking who owns what answers to the issuer.

Written into that contract is a function that marks an address as blacklisted. Call it, and the balance still sits on chain in full view, and it cannot go anywhere at all.

That is how billions of this week’s stolen funds stopped dead within hours of leaving. Bitcoin has no issuer and no such switch. No company holds the ledger, and no address gets turned off by a board decision.

Which is a long way from untouchable. Exchanges refuse tainted deposits, analytics firms tag addresses permanently, and law enforcement seizes keys along with the people holding them.

What vanishes is the shortcut. Getting bitcoin back takes control of the keys, or cooperation from whoever has them, instead of 1 transaction from a privileged address.

So the trade sits underneath every holding decision you make. Censorship resistance and recoverability are the same property viewed from opposite ends, and you do not get to order both.

Everything Else

• MSTR reported record quarterly operating income of $20.91B, though almost all of it is a gain on digital assets rather than cash walking in from the software business, and it holds 848,517 BTC at an average cost near $75,446. 

• HOOD saw crypto revenue fall 55% from a year earlier to $120M and crypto volume drop 38%, while total revenue hit a record and adjusted EBITDA came in at $808M. 

• COIN posted $719M of net income for the quarter, with prediction markets now running above $200M of annualized revenue and average USDC balances up 49% year over year. 

• GLXY turned a $323M quarterly net profit, which reads rather differently than it would have a week later. FXStreet

• KMNO says Kamino is unaffected by this week’s events but has paused borrowing in its SOL and BTC market as a precaution, without saying for how long. Coin Gabbar