Changpeng Zhao skirmishes with Elon Musk on X after Binance disclosed a $6.3 billion crypto theft, as the exchange works to contain the breach and reassure customers. The exchange said it would cover all losses and temporarily paused withdrawals after hackers took funds from digital wallets it held.
Zhao, Binance’s co-founder and former CEO, asked Musk to stop mocking the breach. “Elon, have a lot of respect for you, but bad time to troll. Please stop,” he wrote in an Oct. 30 X post. Zhao also cited Binance’s $500m investment in Musk’s Twitter takeover, saying its SpaceX shares were worth more than a billion.
Binance’s response includes a dispute between two technology leaders, while TRM Labs described the theft as the largest in history. Moneywise reported on the exchange’s response, including its pledge to cover losses and its temporary withdrawal pause. The report also describes Zhao’s public appeal to Musk.
Changpeng Zhao skirmishes as Binance investigates
Binance co-founder and co-CEO Yi He said the company expected to restore normal withdrawal service by Nov. 1. She also said Binance had enough revenue to cover losses and did not yet need to sell SpaceX shares. Zhao replied that he had not said Binance would sell them, adding that he wanted Musk to be “less worried.”
The exchange said customer funds were safe and deposits continued to function normally. It described the incident as a sophisticated hacking operation. Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said the initial investigation suggested the incident may have begun with a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop.
Teng said the laptop gave an attacker access to a service container, where unauthorized withdrawal transactions were submitted. Those details remain Binance’s preliminary account of how the attack began. The company has not announced in the source report that its investigation is complete.
As Changpeng Zhao skirmishes with Musk, the breach has also prompted competing assessments about who carried it out. Cyber experts cited by the Wall Street Journal pointed to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking unit. TRM Labs attributed the theft to the North Korean group, while the U.S. government had previously identified the unit as associated with cryptocurrency thefts and channeling stolen funds to support North Korea’s regime.
Bitcoin fell about 5% after the hack became public, according to the report. At midday Oct. 30, a Bitcoin token was trading at about $76,500.
Changpeng Zhao Skirmishes Over the Breach
Musk appeared to respond to a post comparing Binance’s statements with comments by Sam Bankman-Fried before FTX went bankrupt. The report said Musk used a grimace emoji and appeared to laugh at Zhao in another post. SpaceX representatives did not immediately respond to Moneywise’s request for comment.
The exchange between Musk and Zhao was not their first public dispute. In November 2021, Binance suspended Dogecoin withdrawals while updating its wallet for the memecoin. Musk called the suspension “shady” on what was then Twitter. Zhao responded with a Guardian article about a Tesla recall and asked, “What happened here?”
The business implications extend beyond the exchange’s leaders’ posts. Binance has pledged to absorb customer losses, paused withdrawals temporarily and said normal service was expected by Nov. 1. Its public explanation of the incident centers on a potentially compromised employee laptop and unauthorized transactions, while outside experts have named a possible perpetrator.
Coverage of crypto security controls has also examined the risks exchanges face when protecting digital assets. Readers following technology businesses can compare that context with another technology founder’s company story and reporting on small-business research oversight. Those articles cover separate subjects, but each concerns the companies, institutions or controls shaping business and technology.
For Binance customers, the next stated milestone is the company’s expected restoration of normal withdrawal service by Nov. 1. The source report provides no later service update, final investigation finding or confirmed attribution beyond the views it cites.