280M XRP Pours Into Binance a Week After Record $6.3B Hack

Binance's XRP reserves ballooned between Nov. 3 and Nov. 5, climbing by about 280 million tokens to reach 2.63 billion, per The Crypto Basic. That's an 11.9% jump in just two days, and it lands barely a week after hackers tore into the exchange and drained assets from five hot wallets.

The Oct. 29 breach was a monster: 233.46 million XRP lifted alongside 18,270 Bitcoin, 970,500 Solana and 44.2 million OP tokens. All told, the haul was worth roughly $6.34 billion, making it the biggest crypto heist ever recorded. Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs tied the operation to North Korea's TraderTraitor group.

The flow data flipped hard. Large-transfer netflows on Binance swung from an outflow of 226 million XRP on Oct. 29 to an inflow of 273 million XRP by Nov. 4, a reversal of about 500 million tokens in under a week. Binance's slice of XRP deposits across centralized exchanges climbed to 56.2% on Nov. 5 from 44.3% on Oct. 27, while its withdrawal share slipped to 43.7% from 55.7%.

Binance insists users won't eat any of the losses. The exchange patched the hole with its own money, pulling from the Secure Asset Fund for Users, futures insurance reserves and corporate holdings, and says it froze or intercepted about $2.85 billion tied to the attack. Tether and Circle separately locked up roughly $3 billion in affected assets. By Nov. 4, Binance had restored 98% of the affected assets, with XRP fully backed again by Oct. 31.

Nine other assets hit full reserve backing in the same window, including Bitcoin, USDT, Ripple's RLUSD, Ethereum, Solana, BNB, USD1, USDC and Zcash, according to the exchange's Proof of Reserves system. Binance also widened its Proof of Reserves snapshot from 10 verified assets to 44 on Nov. 4. Rival venues moved the other way: Upbit's XRP reserves dipped to 6.41 billion from 6.44 billion between Oct. 30 and Nov. 5, and Bithumb slipped to 1.81 billion from 1.85 billion since Oct. 23.

One question is still hanging: where did the extra 280 million XRP actually come from? Open-market buys, over-the-counter deals or shuffling between Binance's own wallets are all possible, but the exchange hasn't said which. Until it does, the source stays a mystery.