In the wake of a massive cyberattack that rocked the cryptocurrency landscape, Binance reaffirmed its financial robustness by releasing its end-of-month reserve report for October 2026. Despite the security breach labeled as one of the largest in crypto history, Binance confirmed it adequately secured client assets. Specifically, the exchange detailed that its reserve ratio for XRP was 100.99% and 100.83% for Ripple USD (RLUSD).
October’s Resilience in Numbers
A detailed examination of Binance’s financial position between October 1 and October 31 reveals the impact of the breach that occurred on October 29. Hackers extracted approximately $6.3 billion across ten blockchain networks from Binance wallets. Consequently, the exchange was forced to temporarily suspend deposit and withdrawal operations.
Growth in assets tied to the Ripple ecosystem primarily occurred before the breach. Customer balances of XRP increased by 20.84 million, from 2,495,533,677 to 2,516,373,182. Meanwhile, the total XRP reserves within Binance’s wallets and its custody partners were reported at 2,541,393,612 units.
RLUSD presented a more remarkable increase. User balances expanded from 139.53 million to 201.89 million, with Binance’s reserves reaching 203.56 million RLUSD. This stablecoin, indexed to the US dollar, is issued by Ripple.
Post-Breach Reserve Assurances
A pivotal disclosure from the reserve report is the confirmation that Binance upheld complete asset coverage for its ten most traded assets. This includes leading cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Tether (USDT), Binance Coin (BNB), and Solana (SOL). The exchange made this announcement merely two days following the breach.
Binance declared that reserves for the foremost ten traded assets were restored to a 1:1 ratio, covering all customer funds post-breach.
Approximately $3 billion of the stolen funds were promptly frozen on the blockchain with the collaboration of partners like Tether, Circle, and Ripple. To offset the remainder and re-establish reserves, Binance allocated over $6.34 billion from its equity reserves, leveraging its SAFU fund, Binance Futures insurance fund, and retained earnings.
The outstanding 5% loss in less liquid tokens is being replenished through over-the-counter trades to avoid drastic impacts on spot market pricing.
Verification Mechanism and Market Implications
Binance further highlighted that individuals could independently verify their balances using a Merkle tree structure combined with zk-SNARKs technology.
Glossary: zk-SNARKs is a zero-knowledge proof method enabling the verification of information without revealing its content, facilitating audits of total liabilities while preserving user privacy in reserve reports.
This verification process allows users to ascertain whether their account balances contribute to the total liability calculation. The recent developments shift the market’s evaluation criteria for exchanges from merely whether they were targeted to how swiftly they could respond and whether they managed to cover deficits using internal resources.
