For most cryptocurrency investors, the $6.3 billion theft from Binance served as yet another reminder that digital assets still carry numerous risks. But for a small group of quick-moving trading firms and skilled investors, it was a golden opportunity to make fast profits.
Blockchain data firm Bitquery estimates that the attackers lost approximately $119 million due to hasty selling that resulted in poor trade execution. "This hack triggered violent price swings, with a single seller of enormous size and extreme price insensitivity operating in thin liquidity," said James Aitchison, Chief Investment Officer at Caerus Global Management. He said this aggressive one-directional selling distorted cryptocurrency prices across different trading venues and blockchains, adding: "We traded around this event and found several highly attractive mispricings."
After gaining control of Binance's funds on October 29, the attackers focused on the stablecoin portion of the stolen assets, knowing that issuers would quickly begin freezing the stolen tokens. Within about half an hour, they started aggressively converting stablecoins such as USDT into non-freezable cryptocurrencies like Ether, buying tokens wherever possible and driving prices higher. According to blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, approximately 40 minutes after the Ethereum mainnet phase of the attack began, Tether and Circle froze around $1.8 billion worth of stablecoins. Meanwhile, Binance suspended withdrawals while investigating the security incident. This disrupted the normal flow of funds between trading platforms, causing price gaps that would typically disappear within seconds to persist for much longer.
Luca Parlamento, founder and Chief Investment Officer of D2 Finance, said his firm spent the entire night "on the other side of the hacker's trades." Parlamento said the attackers paid an average price of approximately $2,657 when buying Ether through decentralized exchanges like Uniswap, far above the roughly $2,300 price on cryptocurrency derivatives platform Hyperliquid. "That spread was ours to capture," Parlamento said.
For traders who already had funds on such platforms, the basic strategy was simple: sell Ether where the hacker's frantic buying had driven prices abnormally high, and buy where prices remained low. Annanay Kapila, a former quantitative trader who now runs derivatives exchange QFEX, noticed while working at his office in central London on Thursday evening local time that Ether prices on decentralized exchanges had surged, in some cases exceeding $3,000. Kapila began borrowing large amounts of Ether on decentralized lending platform Aave, using stablecoins as collateral. He then sold those Ether on the exchanges with the highest prices. Kapila said he made a 25% profit from the trade within five minutes.
Kapila noted that due to the lack of sustained volatility in cryptocurrency markets in recent years, such trading opportunities have become increasingly rare, with the last similar event dating back to the price crash in October 2025. "The crypto market has been somewhat quiet this year. Whenever a major market imbalance occurs, it brings enormous opportunities," Kapila said. "I've been in this space since 2021, when this kind of thing happened almost weekly. But now it's relatively rare."
The scale of the price gaps demonstrates how much the typical market structure of cryptocurrencies has been weakened. Achieving fair prices usually depends on traders' ability to quickly move tokens from one trading venue to another. Binance's suspension of withdrawals made matters worse, as locked funds prevented more traders from seizing the opportunity to profit.
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