The co-founder says the exchange can absorb the damage from an estimated $6.3 billion breach while keeping its SpaceX stake intact
Binance co-founder Yi He has a message for anyone wondering whether the exchange will need to sell its SpaceX shares to plug a hole left by a massive hack: it won’t. According to Yi He, Binance’s annual revenue is enough to cover the losses on its own.
That is a big claim, given the size of the hole. The statement arrived on October 30, 2026, one day after a breach that Binance estimated had affected approximately $6.3 billion in assets.
How the numbers break down
The attack reportedly began with something painfully ordinary: a compromised employee laptop. That single point of entry allowed attackers to make unauthorized withdrawals from the platform.
Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao later walked through the recovery math. Roughly $3 billion in assets has been frozen on-chain as part of the cleanup effort.
On top of that, the Secure Asset Fund for Users, better known as SAFU, holds about $1 billion or more to cover user losses tied to the incident. SAFU is Binance’s emergency reserve, built for exactly this kind of scenario.
Subtract the frozen funds and the SAFU coverage from the estimated $6.3 billion, and you are left with a gap of approximately $2 billion. That is the number Binance still needs to account for.
Where SpaceX enters the picture
CZ pointed to Binance’s equity stake in SPCX as one way that remaining gap could be reduced. Those shares are valued at more than $1 billion.
The stake has an unusual origin story. It is linked to Binance’s $500 million investment in Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, a bet that has apparently grown in value over time.
Yi He’s framing is that annual revenue alone can carry the weight of the losses, leaving the SpaceX holding untouched. In practical terms, Binance is saying it can pay this bill from its income rather than dipping into its investments.
What this means for users and the market
For Binance customers, the key question is simple: will they get their money back? Yi He’s statement is designed to answer that with a yes, and to do it without suggesting the company is under financial strain.
The messaging strategy is worth noticing. Two co-founders have now publicly laid out the recovery math, from frozen funds to SAFU to the SpaceX stake to revenue.
Users and traders will be watching whether the frozen $3 billion is actually recovered, and how quickly the remaining gap of about $2 billion is closed.
Regulators are another variable. An incident involving an estimated $6.3 billion is likely to draw scrutiny, and investigations could eventually lead to new compliance expectations for crypto platforms on how they secure employee devices and internal access.
For now, Binance is betting that a clear accounting of how it plans to cover the losses will steady nerves. The SpaceX shares stay on the books, and the exchange says its earnings can absorb the blow.
The next milestones to watch are how much of the frozen funds return to users, how SAFU payouts are handled, and whether the full gap is closed without touching that SPCX stake after all.
