Bitcoin’s 4.27% Oct. 29 Drop Includes Hours Before Binance Hack

Bitcoin (BTC) fell 4.27% in the Oct. 29 UTC trading session on Coinbase Pro, but the full-day move includes nearly 20 hours before Binance’s stated time for the hot-wallet compromise. The daily decline does not isolate how much of the move followed the incident.

BTC/USD opened the UTC date near $81,250 at 8 p.m. ET Oct. 28 and finished near $77,780 at 7:59 p.m. ET Oct. 29. The move follows TokenPost’s earlier comparison of Bitcoin’s post-incident decline.

Binance placed the compromise at about 4:05 p.m. ET (20:05 UTC) Oct. 29. That was about 20 hours after the candle began, leaving less than four hours of the daily interval after the reported incident time. Because the candle spans both periods, its 4.27% change cannot be read as Bitcoin’s decline caused by the breach.

Binance estimated its loss at about $6.3 billion. In its Oct. 30 update, the exchange said about $3 billion had been frozen. It also said it had set aside more than $6.34 billion, including $5 billion in affected tokens, and was buying the remaining assets through market and over-the-counter channels. Frozen funds are not necessarily recovered or returned to customers.

Binance said its investigation found additional breach points after the exchange initially suspected a compromised laptop. The investigation was ongoing, and the exchange said it had found no evidence that wallet private keys were leaked.