A record-breaking cyber theft targeting the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, failed to trigger panic selling in Bitcoin. Instead, Bitcoin showed unexpected resilience after the incident. As of Monday press time, Bitcoin was roughly flat near $78,000, down about 5% from its high before Binance disclosed the hack last Thursday. The move was widely attributed to Binance's early commitment to cover all losses and its rapid remedial response. Caroline Mauron, co-founder of Orbit Markets, said Bitcoin holding key levels over the weekend was essentially a confidence vote in Binance's statements, with the market clearly believing Binance has sufficient funds to cover losses. Last week, Bitcoin was already under pressure from a broad risk-asset selloff, and its relatively firm performance further highlighted that traders handled this event very differently from the 2022 FTX collapse. At that time, then-second-largest exchange FTX, under Sam Bankman-Fried, went from a liquidity crunch to bankruptcy, and Bitcoin fell 19% in three days.
Still, tension beneath the surface has not dissipated. Sean McNulty, a derivatives trader at market maker AQC Tech, noted that Binance buying Bitcoin to compensate users for losses was one reason for Bitcoin's steadier performance, but underlying sentiment remains uneasy. He said people view this event as the tip of the iceberg, and given the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in cyberattacks this year, more hacking incidents are expected; "if the world's largest exchange, Binance, can be hacked, then no one is safe." The options market also reflected rising demand for short-term downside protection. According to options data from crypto derivatives platform Deribit, the one-day 25-delta put skew, which measures how much more traders pay in premium to guard against a sharp decline versus betting on an equal gain, rose about 1 percentage point to 6.37 points within 24 hours. Meanwhile, Cryptoquant analyst Axel Adler noted that after the Binance hack, the Fear and Greed Index fell from an average level of 56 to 30, indicating lingering uncertainty in the market. However, retail sentiment on Stocktwits remained in the "extremely bullish" range, and discussion热度 over the past day stayed at "normal" levels. Kelly Ye, head of research at Talos, believes the market views the hack as an "operational shock" rather than a "systemic shock." She noted that Binance's order book depth briefly fell 25% to 30%, but buyers returned within hours, very different from the loss of confidence across the entire market in 2022. She also said that for institutions, the lesson is simple: no single trading venue can safely hold risk or read prices.
From a technical perspective, Alex Thorn of Galaxy Digital said that despite the world's largest crypto exchange suffering a hack worth more than $6 billion, Bitcoin still closed above its 50-week moving average for a seventh consecutive week. He said Bitcoin closed Sunday's weekly candle at $78,229, about 3.3% above the 50-week moving average of $75,728; Bitcoin reclaimed that level on September 20 after previously closing below it for 44 straight weeks. But notably, the FBI said last Saturday that North Korea was responsible for the Binance theft, which occurred around October 29. The FBI also linked the Binance and Bybit intrusions to the North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor. Previously, the largest crypto-related hack was the approximately $1.5 billion stolen from Bybit in 2025; similar to the Binance incident, the Bybit hack initially had a relatively mild impact on Bitcoin, but losses widened in the following days, with Bitcoin still down about 14% a week after the February 21 attack.
Looking ahead, analysts pointed to signs that the latest crypto pullback may be nearing its end. Michaël Van de Poppe, founder of MN Fund, said that with U.S. midterm elections approaching and attention on whether Bitcoin can maintain its recent technical strength in the final two months of the year, political uncertainty may already be priced in. He believes the U.S. midterm elections "will not constitute a major event" and judged that Bitcoin is in the final stages of a pullback, although it may still sweep one more low in the coming weeks. He added that his outlook for the last two months of the year is bullish, and noted that crypto market sentiment has quickly turned "extremely bearish," which he considers unreasonable. However, Jeff Ko, chief analyst at ViaBTC, still warned that a change in congressional partisan control "could have a major impact on how crypto market structure legislation advances," which may be a bigger short-term variable for the crypto market. It is understood that the U.S. midterm elections will be held local time on Tuesday. Analyst Willy Woo pointed from a relative performance angle that Bitcoin fell 2.9% last week, while gold fell 3.0%, and ETF holders sold $643 million over the same period; he said, "Bitcoin is in a bull market." Meanwhile, crypto analyst Ted Pillows also mentioned that Bitcoin experienced five declines of more than 30% during the 2019-2021 bull market and four declines of more than 25% during 2023-2025, "and we are currently only in the first pullback of this bull market."
Comments