Every fortune leaves evidence.
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Changpeng Zhao isn't allowed to run Binance anymore. He gave that up in a guilty plea. This week $6,300,000,000 left Binance's wallets in about 20 minutes, per TRM Labs, and he's the one saying users should expect to be made whole.
He has been here before. In May 2019 hackers took 7,000 bitcoin from Binance, about $40,000,000 at the time, and Zhao went live to explain. He said he hadn't slept in 29 hours. Then he floated something wild: getting Bitcoin miners to rewrite the blockchain and erase the theft.
"To be honest we can actually do this probably within the next few days," he told viewers. Within a day he backed off. Binance covered the loss from its emergency fund, called SAFU.
Below is that livestream, and the day he was sentenced.
In November 2023 he stood in a Seattle federal court and pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. He paid $50,000,000 personally. Binance paid $4,300,000,000. He served four months in prison.
In October 2025, President Trump pardoned him.
On October 29 the money started moving. Binance's first statement pointed to one DevOps engineer's laptop. CEO Richard Teng later said: "This was not carried out by one person." TRM Labs and Chainalysis say North Korea is almost certainly behind it.
Co-founder Yi He posted four words: "User funds are SAFU."
Tether froze more than 1.5 billion USDT. Circle froze more than 800 million USDC. Zhao wrote: "as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered."
The SAFU fund holds about 15,000 bitcoin, roughly $1,170,000,000 by Forbes' estimate. That's less than a fifth of what was taken this week. Binance says it will cover the rest from its own money.
Kim Jong Un's hackers tried to take $951,000,000 from the reserves of Bangladesh's central bank in 2016. They walked away with $81,000,000, and one of the things that tripped them up was a spelling mistake.
On the morning of Friday, February 5, staff in Dhaka found the printer that spits out every SWIFT confirmation dead. "Since such glitches happened before, we thought it was a common problem just like any other day," joint director Zubair Bin Huda later told police, per AFP.
Here is how the people who chased them tell it.
The printer wasn't broken. Malware had switched it off. While Bangladesh shut for its weekend, the hackers sent the New York Fed 35 payment orders in the bank's name, $951 million in total. Five went through. $81 million reached accounts in the Philippines and vanished through Manila casinos. Another $20 million went to a "Shalika Fandation" in Sri Lanka, and a routing bank stopped to ask about the spelling. That one got reversed.
Atiur Rahman, the governor, resigned the next month. In 2018 the US charged a North Korean programmer named Park Jin Hyok. The 2021 indictment added two more names and said the scheme served "the strategic and financial interests of the DPRK government and its leader, Kim Jong Un." John Demers, then head of the DOJ's national security division, put it more simply: North Korea's operatives, "using keyboards rather than guns," had become "the world's leading bank robbers."
After that they mostly stopped bothering with banks. Bybit lost $1.5 billion to them in February 2025.
On Thursday it was Binance. TRM Labs says $6,300,000,000 left its wallets in about 20 minutes. On Saturday the FBI named TraderTraitor, the same North Korean unit behind Bybit. Binance's first look pointed to one compromised laptop.
"It's bank robbery, in this case, at the speed of the Internet," Ari Redbord of TRM Labs told AP.
Before Thursday, Chainalysis put everything North Korea had ever stolen in crypto at around $6.75 billion. Twenty minutes at Binance nearly doubled it.
What the FBI and Binance find next goes in the replies below.
Update: the US Secret Service says that within minutes of the theft on Thursday afternoon, its investigators and industry partners froze "a significant portion" of the stolen crypto.
CZ thanked them a couple of hours ago: "You acted within minutes to help track and freeze stolen funds."
Three years ago he pleaded guilty in a US case over Binance's anti-money-laundering failures.
Exhibit A retweeted
Kim Jong Un's hackers tried to take $951,000,000 from the reserves of Bangladesh's central bank in 2016. They walked away with $81,000,000, and one of the things that tripped them up was a spelling mistake.
On the morning of Friday, February 5, staff in Dhaka found the printer that spits out every SWIFT confirmation dead. "Since such glitches happened before, we thought it was a common problem just like any other day," joint director Zubair Bin Huda later told police, per AFP.
Here is how the people who chased them tell it.
The printer wasn't broken. Malware had switched it off. While Bangladesh shut for its weekend, the hackers sent the New York Fed 35 payment orders in the bank's name, $951 million in total. Five went through. $81 million reached accounts in the Philippines and vanished through Manila casinos. Another $20 million went to a "Shalika Fandation" in Sri Lanka, and a routing bank stopped to ask about the spelling. That one got reversed.
Atiur Rahman, the governor, resigned the next month. In 2018 the US charged a North Korean programmer named Park Jin Hyok. The 2021 indictment added two more names and said the scheme served "the strategic and financial interests of the DPRK government and its leader, Kim Jong Un." John Demers, then head of the DOJ's national security division, put it more simply: North Korea's operatives, "using keyboards rather than guns," had become "the world's leading bank robbers."
After that they mostly stopped bothering with banks. Bybit lost $1.5 billion to them in February 2025.
On Thursday it was Binance. TRM Labs says $6,300,000,000 left its wallets in about 20 minutes. On Saturday the FBI named TraderTraitor, the same North Korean unit behind Bybit. Binance's first look pointed to one compromised laptop.
"It's bank robbery, in this case, at the speed of the Internet," Ari Redbord of TRM Labs told AP.
Before Thursday, Chainalysis put everything North Korea had ever stolen in crypto at around $6.75 billion. Twenty minutes at Binance nearly doubled it.
What the FBI and Binance find next goes in the replies below.
Update: Binance reopened withdrawals this morning, starting with BTC, ETH, USDT, USDC, BNB and XRP. It now says 95% of the stolen assets are replaced with company funds, per CoinDesk. Three days from the biggest hack in crypto history to open withdrawals.
Update: the FBI now says North Korea’s TraderTraitor group did it, per The Defiant. Same unit the FBI named for Bybit’s $1.5 billion last year. This one is four times bigger.
Update: Binance says 90% of the stolen assets are already replaced. that took two days. FTX customers waited over two years for their first payout. would you put money back on Binance tomorrow?
Exhibit A retweeted
Changpeng Zhao isn't allowed to run Binance anymore. He gave that up in a guilty plea. This week $6,300,000,000 left Binance's wallets in about 20 minutes, per TRM Labs, and he's the one saying users should expect to be made whole.
He has been here before. In May 2019 hackers took 7,000 bitcoin from Binance, about $40,000,000 at the time, and Zhao went live to explain. He said he hadn't slept in 29 hours. Then he floated something wild: getting Bitcoin miners to rewrite the blockchain and erase the theft.
"To be honest we can actually do this probably within the next few days," he told viewers. Within a day he backed off. Binance covered the loss from its emergency fund, called SAFU.
Below is that livestream, and the day he was sentenced.
In November 2023 he stood in a Seattle federal court and pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program. He paid $50,000,000 personally. Binance paid $4,300,000,000. He served four months in prison.
In October 2025, President Trump pardoned him.
On October 29 the money started moving. Binance's first statement pointed to one DevOps engineer's laptop. CEO Richard Teng later said: "This was not carried out by one person." TRM Labs and Chainalysis say North Korea is almost certainly behind it.
Co-founder Yi He posted four words: "User funds are SAFU."
Tether froze more than 1.5 billion USDT. Circle froze more than 800 million USDC. Zhao wrote: "as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered."
The SAFU fund holds about 15,000 bitcoin, roughly $1,170,000,000 by Forbes' estimate. That's less than a fifth of what was taken this week. Binance says it will cover the rest from its own money.
NORTH KOREA DID IT
BINANCE WAS HACKED FOR $6,300,000,000.
THREE OF THE BIGGEST BLOCKCHAIN INVESTIGATORS NOW POINT AT NORTH KOREA.
TRM Labs and Chainalysis both say they have "high confidence" it was TraderTraitor, the North Korean hacking unit tied to the Lazarus Group. Elliptic says North Korea is "likely" behind it and calls it "almost certainly the largest theft of any kind in history."
It started with one engineer's laptop. Binance says attackers got in through a compromised DevOps machine, then found more ways in. In about 20 minutes, roughly $6.3 billion left its hot wallets.
That's more than four times Bybit. The FBI pinned Bybit's $1.5 billion on the same Lazarus network within five days. Binance says it's now working with the FBI and the Secret Service. Nobody official has named North Korea yet.
About $3 billion is frozen. Binance says it has set aside $6.34 billion of its own money to cover user losses. Withdrawals are paused.
Last night we posted $2.8 billion while Binance hadn't said a word. The real number was more than double.
If one laptop can open the door to $6.3 billion, where are you keeping your coins tonight
BINANCE IS BEING HACKED.
UP TO $5,600,000,000 IS GONE.
CZ, tonight: " Binance was hacked ."
The biggest on-chain tallies now put the drain from Binance-labeled wallets at about $5.6 billion, double what we posted an hour ago. Roughly $3.5 billion on Ethereum, $1.4 billion in Bitcoin (18,270 BTC) and $630 million on Tron, per Decrypt.
The FBI pinned Bybit on North Korea's Lazarus. Some analysts already say tonight looks like the same playbook. Nobody has confirmed that yet.
Tether and Circle have frozen about $1.8 billion of stablecoins sitting in the receiving wallet.
Stablecoins can be frozen. Bitcoin and ETH can't. 18,270 BTC is out there with no off switch.
Binance itself still says only that it is "actively investigating" and that user funds are "SAFU."
The founder says hack. The company says investigating. Which one would you believe with your money on it?
BINANCE HAS BEEN HACKED $2,800,000,000 JUST LEFT BINANCE WALLETS IN 17 MINUTES.
BINANCE HASN'T SAID A WORD.
At 20:24 UTC, a wallet Etherscan labels "Binance 14" sent about 167,464 ETH and roughly 1.6 billion USDT to a brand-new address. At 20:41, "Binance: Hot Wallet 34" sent 780 million USDC to the same address.
Tallied across five blockchains, it comes to about $2.8 billion.
The market didn't wait for an explanation. On Binance's own price feed, BNB fell as much as 8.7% in under an hour. ETH dropped 4.4%. Bitcoin lost 3.2%.
On-chain investigators are calling it a possible hack. Others say Binance could be moving its own money. A trader we know says BTC and USDT vanished from his Binance account tonight without a withdrawal from his side. We can't verify that yet.
Three years ago Binance pleaded guilty to federal charges and agreed to pay more than $4 billion. That press conference is in the photo.
If it's a hack, it's the biggest in crypto history. The current record is Bybit, about $1.5 billion, in February 2025.
If it isn't, someone just moved $2.8 billion of other people's money and nobody thought to tell them.
Would you leave your coins on an exchange tonight?
BINANCE HAS BEEN HACKED $2,800,000,000 JUST LEFT BINANCE WALLETS IN 17 MINUTES.
BINANCE HASN'T SAID A WORD.
At 20:24 UTC, a wallet Etherscan labels "Binance 14" sent about 167,464 ETH and roughly 1.6 billion USDT to a brand-new address. At 20:41, "Binance: Hot Wallet 34" sent 780 million USDC to the same address.
Tallied across five blockchains, it comes to about $2.8 billion.
The market didn't wait for an explanation. On Binance's own price feed, BNB fell as much as 8.7% in under an hour. ETH dropped 4.4%. Bitcoin lost 3.2%.
On-chain investigators are calling it a possible hack. Others say Binance could be moving its own money. A trader we know says BTC and USDT vanished from his Binance account tonight without a withdrawal from his side. We can't verify that yet.
Three years ago Binance pleaded guilty to federal charges and agreed to pay more than $4 billion. That press conference is in the photo.
If it's a hack, it's the biggest in crypto history. The current record is Bybit, about $1.5 billion, in February 2025.
If it isn't, someone just moved $2.8 billion of other people's money and nobody thought to tell them.
Would you leave your coins on an exchange tonight?
Martha Stewart didn't go to prison for insider trading. The judge threw that charge out. She went to prison for lying about a trade that saved her $45,673.
Two years earlier, her company's IPO had made her $1.2 billion richer in one day, per 60 Minutes. Six months after the trade, she went on live TV to make a salad. The host asked about the stock. Martha said: "I want to focus on my salad."
In the video below, a 1995 Martha tells 60 Minutes which sin she can't stand in people. Wait for it.
ImClone's CEO was her friend Sam Waksal. On December 27, 2001, he learned the FDA was about to reject the company's cancer drug. He and his family tried to dump their shares. Martha's broker, Peter Bacanovic, had his assistant call her that same day. She sold $230,000 of stock.
The FDA news came out the next day.
Then came the cover story. Martha and Bacanovic told investigators she had a standing order to sell if the price fell below $60. Prosecutors said that story was made up after the fact. The jury convicted her of conspiracy, obstruction and two counts of lying to federal investigators.
Waksal pleaded guilty and got 7 years and 3 months.
The man who told investigators the truth was the assistant, Doug Faneuil. He got a $2,000 fine and no prison. Bacanovic got the same five months she did.
She reported to a federal prison camp in Alderson, West Virginia, on October 8, 2004. Per History.com, her company's stock roughly quadrupled while she was inside. In 2006 she paid the SEC about $195,000 to settle.
In 2025 she said the line again, in a Super Bowl ad for Uber Eats.
The trade saved her $45,673. The lie cost her five months. The line she used to dodge the question was selling Super Bowl ads 23 years later.
Tyler Shultz was 22 when he reported Theranos to state regulators. His grandfather, former Secretary of State George Shultz, sat on the company's board and didn't believe him.
He had first met Elizabeth Holmes in that grandfather's living room. A few months after he quit, she came to the family's Thanksgiving.
In the video below, he explains what it cost him.
Theranos claimed a few drops of blood could run hundreds of tests. Tyler worked with the machine every day and watched it fail. When he raised it, Holmes's partner and COO, Sunny Balwani, reportedly told him he would have been fired if his last name weren't Shultz.
In 2014 he filed a confidential complaint with New York regulators and quit. In 2015 he became a source for Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou.
Theranos worked out who the leak was. Its lawyers came to his grandfather's house to get him to sign papers saying he never talked to the press. He wouldn't sign. His legal bills passed $400,000, and his parents warned they might have to sell their home.
Forbes once put Holmes at $4,500,000,000. In 2016 it marked her down to zero.
On January 3, 2022, a jury found her guilty on four counts of defrauding investors. She got 135 months. She and Balwani were ordered to pay back $452,000,000.
When the verdict came in, Tyler's family opened champagne. His grandfather had died the year before. Tyler says he never quite apologized, but near the end he admitted Tyler had been right.
This month A24 released a documentary built around Holmes's last 34 days before prison. Per CBS, it made $15,000,000 its opening weekend. She is set to move to a halfway house in August 2027 and has asked the President to cut her sentence short.
Holmes got a film crew for her last month of freedom. Tyler got lawyers at his grandfather's house.
HOUSE DEMOCRATS JUST PUT FORWARD A RESOLUTION: NO BAILOUTS FOR AI COMPANIES.
A YEAR AGO, OPENAI'S CFO WAS ASKED ON STAGE ABOUT A "FEDERAL BACKSTOP" FOR CHIP INVESTMENT.
SHE NEEDED ONE WORD.
"Exactly."
Nov 5, 2025, WSJ Tech Live. That same evening Friar wrote on LinkedIn that OpenAI is not seeking a government backstop and that the word had "muddied the point."
The next day the White House AI czar, David Sacks, posted that there will be no federal bailout for AI.
Today's resolution is nonbinding. It says an AI company that goes broke should go through ordinary bankruptcy, like any other business.
In 2008 the House voted a bank rescue down once. Four days later it passed one worth up to $700,000,000,000.
If the AI boom breaks, who should eat the loss: shareholders or taxpayers?
WARREN BUFFETT IS WORTH $154,900,000,000.
HIS HOUSE COST $31,500.
He bought it in 1958 and never left. In 2013 CBS asked if his billionaire friends tease him about driving his own Cadillac.
"No, they know me pretty well."
Then: "I could buy any house in the world and I don't want any other house than the one I'm in."
What would you never upgrade, no matter how rich you got?
IN 2003, NOBODY WOULD SELL ELON MUSK ROCKET PARTS.
THIS WEEK FORBES HAS HIM AT $937,000,000,000.
The parts problem was the easy part. SpaceX's first three Falcon 1 launches failed, the last one in August 2008, and the company was nearly out of money with one rocket left.
That fourth rocket reached orbit on September 28, 2008.
Last year SpaceX flew 165 of the world's 325 orbital launches.
Nobody's refusing to sell him anything now.
