How Hackers Drained $6.3B From Binance
Shownotes
Overnight brought the biggest heist in crypto history, as hackers drained $6.3 billion from Binance. Amazon’s AI spending soared while retail growth stalled, Spotify eyed a $5-a-month AI remix tool, and longreads covered El Niño forecasting and old-time fiddlers.
- Binance says initial investigation suggests a compromised DevOps laptop may have enabled a ~$6.3B hack; Tether froze 1.5B+ USDT and Circle froze 800M+ USDC (The Block)
- Binance raced to cover losses from the biggest crypto heist ever; freezes recovered ~$3B, leaving hackers — attributed to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group — with ~$3.3B, against a $1.23B SAFU reserve plus company funds (WSJ)
- An EIP-7702 permission let the attacker point Binance’s busy “Binance 14” hot wallet at a sweeper contract via 50 signed authorizations, draining $2.5B on Ethereum alone (CoinDesk)
- Amazon reports Q3 revenue up 12% YoY to $201.94B, vs. $202.31B est., net income down 2% to $20.7B, forecasts Q4 revenue below est. (Business Wire)
- Amazon spent $77B+ on property and equipment in Q3 to meet AI demand, while online sales grew just 2%, the slowest since early 2023, and shares fell on the results (Bloomberg)
- Sources: Spotify aims to launch an AI product in Q1 2027 that lets subscribers create their own remixes and covers for ~$5 per month, pending licensing deals (FT)
Longreads
- AI’s ability to forecast extreme weather faces a major test in the coming months amid a historic El Niño, as some scientists question the tech’s accuracy (FT)
- In a southwest Virginia fairground, thousands of musicians gather every August to keep the centuries-old tradition of fiddling from flickering out (Longreads)
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