Bitcoin ETFs Shed 643 Million Dollars in First Session After Binance Hack

United States spot bitcoin ETFs recorded 643.2 million dollars of net redemptions on Friday, Oct. 30, their largest single-day outflow of October and the first full session after attackers began draining about 6.4 billion dollars from Binance, according to Decrypt's ETF tracker. The theft started at 4:05 p.m. ET on Thursday, after United States markets had closed, so Friday was the first chance for fund investors to price it.

The sale wiped out four straight days of gains. Bitcoin ETFs had gathered 440.73 million dollars from Monday through Thursday, and Friday's total reversed that cushion to leave the week about 202.6 million dollars in the red, bitcoin.com reported, citing SoSoValue data. October finished with roughly 516 million dollars of net outflows across the category, and cumulative inflows since the January 2024 launch slipped to 57.4 billion dollars, the Decrypt figures showed.

Redemptions were spread across the largest products rather than concentrated in one fund. BlackRock's IBIT lost 233.70 million dollars, Fidelity's FBTC shed 201.04 million and Ark & 21Shares' ARKB saw 129.55 million dollars exit, the reported fund-level splits show. Grayscale's GBTC gave up another 53.32 million and Bitwise's BITB 25.72 million. Trading value reached 6.35 billion dollars, about three times Thursday's level, and net assets in the bitcoin funds fell below 100 billion dollars to 98.14 billion.

Ether and solana products fell as well. Ether ETFs lost 155.85 million dollars on Friday, a fifth consecutive daily outflow that pushed the weekly decline to about 431.5 million, bitcoin.com said. BlackRock's ETHA accounted for 76.64 million of that day's total, with Grayscale's Ether Mini Trust and ETHE posting withdrawals of 34.14 million and 21.51 million. Solana ETFs shed 10.74 million dollars on Friday, their fifth straight session of losses, taking the week's total to about 71.5 million dollars.

The Thursday session had still been positive. Funds took in 17.2 million dollars that day, a figure that predated the theft and therefore does not reflect any reaction to it, the tracker data show. Ether products also carried a heavier month behind them, with October losses of roughly 1.61 billion dollars after the Friday drop, and solana funds recorded net inflows on only two days all month.

Friday's selling also broke a streak outside the three largest assets. Zcash funds lost 4.57 million dollars through Grayscale's ZCSH, ending an eight-session inflow run, while XRP products recorded an outflow of 496,500 dollars and HYPE and NEAR funds saw no net flows, per the same daily tally.

Redemptions touched five major products at the same time, a breadth that earlier October inflow days, often concentrated in IBIT, did not show, the daily breakdown observed. That report also noted flow data shows where money moved rather than why any individual investor sold.

Macro conditions sat alongside the security shock. The Federal Reserve held its benchmark rate at 3.75 percent to 4 percent on Wednesday, with two officials voting for a hike, and traders had priced odds above 70 percent for a December increase, the markets report added.

The price move gave the flows their backdrop. Bitcoin fell about 4 percent on Friday to roughly 76,400 dollars, and more than 1.3 billion dollars of leveraged positions were liquidated, Decrypt reported. By Saturday the asset had steadied near 77,520 dollars, up 0.5 percent over 24 hours and down 3.3 percent on the week. The Friday drop was far smaller than the nearly 11 percent plunge that followed a failed attack on Binance in 2018.

Binance has said it will cover all losses with company funds and an emergency reserve, and Tether and Circle froze more than 2.3 billion dollars in stolen stablecoins, the report noted. Some Wall Street firms urged clients to buy crypto-linked shares on the potential weakness in markets.

The flows raised a custody question that had been dormant. OneKey founder Yishi Wang warned that large bitcoin vehicles such as IBIT could become attractive targets for sophisticated attackers, but the comments described a hypothetical risk and there is no evidence that IBIT itself has been targeted.