The binance withdrawals test that this whole week has been building toward now has a result, and it comes in the exchange own numbers. Binance said it had processed around $4.6 billion in withdrawals and $1 billion in deposits by 10:30 a.m. ET on Sunday, CNN reported. That is not a promise to pay and it is not a plan to reopen. It is money that actually left and money that actually arrived, on the first morning after the largest crypto theft on record. Our Crypto hub keeps the full story in one place as the next phases open.
Binance Withdrawals: What the Numbers Show
Start with why this figure can be trusted in a way that earlier figures could not. All weekend, outside trackers flagged large transfers leaving Binance wallets, and those flags mixed two very different things together. Some transfers were customers taking their coins out. Others were Binance moving money between its own wallets, a point leader Yi He made publicly when she said a flagged transfer was the company own new wallet. No outsider could split one from the other, so no honest post could call those flags customer outflows.
The processed total solves that problem. A processed withdrawal is a completed customer transaction counted by the exchange itself. Against it sits $1 billion in deposits, meaning some customers were putting money in on the same morning others were taking money out. Independent data points the same way. Bloomberg reported that the exchange had seen some $3.5 billion in net outflows by evening in Asia, on DefiLlama data, and a Binance spokesperson said withdrawal volumes spiked at the beginning and were then stabilizing to what the company considers normal activity. The spokesperson added that the volume was a small percentage of overall assets under management. Bloomberg put Binance assets at roughly $132 billion, against about $29 billion at OKX, the next largest exchange.
Markets read the morning the same way. Bitcoin traded near $78,000 on Sunday and most major coins moved by less than 1 percent on the day, Bloomberg reported. A heavy morning of payouts with a calm price suggests holders who wanted out got out, and the market absorbed it.
Why This Test Matters More Than the Announcement
Announcements are cheap in a crisis. Any exchange can publish a coverage percentage, and this week Binance published two of them, 90 percent on Saturday and then 95 percent, as covered in our Binance hack update on the road to Sunday. A payout total is harder to fake, because thousands of customers can see their own transaction in it. If the money had not arrived, Sunday morning would have filled with failure reports instead of volume figures.
The details under the total still matter. CoinDesk reported that phase one reopened bitcoin and assets on 15 other blockchains, with ether, USDT, USDC, BNB and XRP among the first services restored, and that further reopenings depend on each network passing security and stability checks. Binance says the top ten balances, including bitcoin, ether, USDT, BNB, Solana, USDC and XRP, are fully backed at 100 percent. The remaining 5 percent of the stolen amount sits in less liquid tokens that take longer to source at the scale needed. Binance also said about $3 billion of the stolen assets is currently immobilized, largely in stablecoins whose issuers can block them, a figure that has grown as partners freeze funds.
Read those two facts together and the shape of the recovery is clear. The liquid core of the exchange is open and paying. The long tail is not finished, and the stolen money hunt is still active. Both things are true at once, and holders with coins in the later phases should plan on that basis rather than on the headline alone.
What Still Has Not Been Proven
A strong first morning is not the end of the proof, and the distinction matters for anyone deciding how much to keep on any exchange. This morning tested whether Binance could pay. It did not test whether every balance is backed in the way the company says. That test is the full proof of reserves report Binance has promised, the version that lets each user verify that their own balance sits inside the reported numbers. Until that report lands and outside reviewers have worked through it, coverage remains a company claim supported by payouts, not a verified fact. The FBI confirmation covered this morning also raised the stakes, because a state sponsored theft invites sanctions and seizure work that will run for months.
The cause is also still open. Binance has said the incident may involve a compromised engineer laptop and additional points of breach, and that it found no evidence of leaked private keys. A full technical account has been promised once the investigation allows it. Until it arrives, no user can judge whether the door the attackers used is truly closed.
Even professional holders are splitting on the judgment call. Bloomberg reported that quantitative firm SQS Trading holds about a quarter of its trading capital on Binance and is cutting that by roughly a third. Arctic Digital research head Justin d’Anethan said he had not moved away and would not. Same facts, two defensible answers. The difference is how much proof each holder demands.
What Holders Should Do in the Next Phase
Here is the usable part. First, if your token or network is still waiting for a later phase, watch for the phase announcement for that exact pairing before you act, and start with a small test withdrawal to a wallet you control when it opens. Confirm the address on a second device before you move a larger amount. Second, save your balance records, transaction IDs and any payout confirmations from today, because your own files are your evidence if any later step stalls. Third, treat the $1 billion deposit figure as information, not instruction. Other people moving money in does not make your decision for you. Fourth, ignore every message offering to speed up a payout, unlock a phase or verify a wallet for a fee. A busy payout morning is exactly when impersonators work hardest, and that message is a second theft attempt dressed as help.
The bigger lesson is the one this week keeps teaching from a new angle. Judge an exchange by paid totals and published proof, not by reassurance. Today Binance passed the payout part of that test at real scale, $4.6 billion out the door with the system still standing. The proof part is still owed, and calm holders will keep asking for it while they decide where their coins live.
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