After the news that hackers stole $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency from Binance, Elon Musk commented that AI agents could do the same thing in the future.

On October 29, the Binance cryptocurrency exchange was attacked by hackers, estimated to affect assets worth about 6.3 billion USD. Blockchain data shows that most of the money was withdrawn in about 20 minutes, starting at 8:05 p.m. on October 29 (3:00 a.m. on October 30, Hanoi time), including Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tron, Solana, and transferred to many addresses controlled by the same attack group.

The account cryptoblaney, who introduced himself as having been trading cryptocurrency for 9 years, wrote on social network X on October 30: "The Binance hackers may have just made one of the smartest moves I have ever seen in the cryptocurrency field."

Specifically, after the hack, stablecoin issuers, including Circle with USDC and Tether with USDT, froze this amount. Binance estimates that of the $6.3 billion stolen, about $3 billion was frozen. Stablecoins are digital currencies that are pegged to a currency, such as USD, at a 1:1 ratio and backed by assets such as government bonds or fiat currencies.

But according to blockchain data analysis company TRM Labs, hackers calculated ahead, sold USDT to market makers and borrowed Ether by mortgaging stablecoins. As a result, Ether is difficult to freeze, while the organization lending to the hacker must keep the stolen stablecoin frozen.

On the same day, Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, responded to cryptoblaney's post: "At some point, superintelligent agents will do the same to make money for themselves, not for humans."

Musk's comment attracted two million views, 17,000 likes and more than 1,000 comments after two days.

The account cryptoblaney then replied: "What's scary is that AI agents don't need to sleep, panic, or make emotional decisions. Imagine thousands of such agents operating autonomously on decentralized financial platforms, looking for vulnerabilities and funding themselves 24/7. We are far from ready for that scenario."

In addition to predictions about AI agents, Musk also made many other comments on X after the Binance hack. He and billionaire Changpeng Zhao (CZ), former CEO and founder of Binance, even had a war of words. While CZ appeared serious about the hack, Musk teased back with emojis.

On October 31, Richard Teng, co-CEO of Binance, announced that "90% of the stolen assets have been replenished and committed to compensating for the remaining 10%. Users will not suffer financial losses from this incident."

According to Reuters, Binance digital currency exchange compensates 90% of lost assets by buying new tokens, the remaining 10% consists of tokens with less liquidity, which can take longer to buy. The money used to buy back tokens comes from Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), Futures Insurance Fund (FIF) and the company's own treasury.

The Binance hack on October 29 was considered the largest scale in the history of digital currency exchanges with an estimated 6.3 billion USD stolen. Binance initially believed that the hack may have originated from a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, but on October 30 announced the discovery of additional intrusion points.

Some blockchain analysis companies commented that the hack had many similarities with previous activities believed to have been carried out by North Korean hackers. Two companies, TRM Labs and Chainalysis, both believe that the culprit is the North Korean hacker group TraderTraitor.

By October 31, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also named TraderTraitor. The agency said it detected TraderTraitor converting stolen assets to Ethereum cryptocurrency, predicting the hacker group would continue to launder these funds by converting them through decentralized financial services and instant swaps. The FBI is calling on private entities to block transactions to or from addresses used by TraderTraitor to launder money.

Thu Thao summary