A $6.3 Billion Hack, and Solana Settles at 148M

Binance lost $6.3 billion in the largest crypto hack on record, then spent the week refilling its wallets before reopening withdrawals on Sunday. On-chain, Solana recorded its first full week after its validator upgrade, and its count settled at half the prior level. The question running through this issue is what normal looks like after a reset.

Things that mattered

Binance hack: $6.3 billion gone, withdrawals back

Binance confirmed a $6.3 billion exploit, the biggest crypto hack on record. The FBI blamed North Korea and asked the DeFi community to block BTC, ETH and SOL addresses tied to the attack (CoinDesk). Binance set aside $6.34 billion to cover losses while industry partners froze another $3 billion (The Block). On Sunday it opened withdrawals in phases, starting with bitcoin (CoinDesk).

Why it matters: the exchange is absorbing the loss itself, so attention moves from the theft to whether the phased restart runs as promised.

Prices took the other half of the blow

Bitcoin traded near $77,350 after the hack, and crypto futures liquidations jumped to $1.57 billion (CoinDesk). With a tech-stock sell-off spreading to gold, Cointelegraph reported bitcoin risks its worst October in 12 years (Cointelegraph).

Why it matters: the hack landed while tech markets were already sliding, leaving crypto prices no calm backdrop to absorb it.

The NYSE’s owner moves toward Hyperliquid perps

ICE plans an ICE[XYZ] venue offering 24/7 perpetual futures on stocks, commodities and crypto, pending CFTC approval, and is investing in Trade[XYZ] (CoinDesk). HYPE rose 15% as the plans emerged (The Block).

Why it matters: a traditional exchange operator is putting money behind a crypto-native trading venue, with the regulator’s answer still to come.

Narrative vs Network

Away from the hack, Stellar collected the week’s institutional headlines: Janus Henderson and Centrifuge launched a tokenized Nasdaq-100 fund on it (CoinDesk), and Curve Finance chose it for its first native deployment outside the EVM ecosystem (The Block). On-chain, Stellar recorded 4.10M transactions a day, up 15.7%, eighth on the board. This time the headlines and the network pointed the same way.

The scoreboard

The reset also reached the top ten itself. WAX Blockchain and Bitcoin SV left the main ranking after moving to the emerging board, where both recorded more activity, not less; IOTA (2.29M a day, up 6%) and MegaETH (1.97M, flat) took ninth and tenth. Fogo held third, but its count fell 57.2% to 47.3M, a second straight drop after its two-week surge.

The reality check

The biggest reset belongs to Solana. Its Alpenglow upgrade went live on October 21 and replaced the voting system whose transactions used to fill its count. Last week’s average still mixed days from both sides of the switch; this is the first full week after it. The answer: 148.3M transactions a day, provisional, down 50.3% from 298.2M and well below the 429.4M recorded two weeks earlier. Solana still leads, but Lighter, at 133.7M and down just 3.1%, now sits within touching distance. The board’s total fell 33.9%, and Solana and Fogo together account for nearly all of that decline. Solana’s new figure reads less like a slump than a fresh starting line.

Bitcoin pulse

Bitcoin’s own network had a steadier week than its price. Estimated hashrate stood at 1,086.9 EH/s, down 0.9%. Difficulty rose 5.54% at the October 29 adjustment, and fees stayed near the floor at 1.2 sat/vB, the same as the week before.

One number

13.52M transactions a day: that is what Aptos recorded, down just 0.3% while the board’s total fell by a third. In a week of resets, fourth place barely moved.

Keep an eye on

• Binance’s proof of reserves. The exchange plans to publish it on Monday (CoinDesk), and said the assets set aside to cover losses would be included (Cointelegraph).
• Bitcoin SV’s spike. It recorded 7.16M transactions a day, up 178.2% after last week’s 233% jump. That is a spike worth watching, and a third week will say whether it holds.

Last week was about resets. Next Sunday shows which of the new numbers have become baselines.

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