“The credibly neutral networks did nothing despite the scale of the theft and the bearer assets remain stolen.”

– Omid Malekan, Columbia Business School, on X · Friday

Welcome to the Monday edition of the 51 Insights digital asset newsletter.

On Friday we reported on how the $6.3B Binance hack went down. Over the weekend Binance paid customers and reopened. The FBI blames North Korea.

Here's what matters this week:

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THE BIG STORY / EXCHANGE RISK

Binance paid. The bitcoin is still gone.

What's going on here?

Binance reopened withdrawals on Sunday, two and a half days after thieves emptied its hot wallets. As a result, customers took out $4.65 billion and paid in $1.01 billion in the first nine and a half hours. Net, $3.64 billion left: that’s only 2.1% of the $171 billion Binance held before the hack. Binance says it has replaced about 95% of the stolen assets with its own money. On Saturday the FBI named North Korea and published 628 addresses for exchanges to block.