“The exploitation of the vulnerability on Binance intensified sales”: the crypto market plunges after the massive cyberattack on the specialized exchange, its native token BNB is the most weakened

The cyberattack on cryptocurrency giant Binance this Thursday is sending investors into a cold sweat. In the evening, bitcoin fell 4.5% in a few hours, reaching $77,000, its lowest since early September.

At 9:15 a.m. this Friday, October 30, bitcoin is trading just above $78,000 on CoinMarketCap. In the end, the asset lost 2.5% in 24 hours.

The fall remains much greater for other cryptocurrencies on the market. Ether, the second largest crypto in terms of capitalization, lost 4% in 24 hours, while BNB, Binance's native cryptocurrency, lost 6% over the same period. It is naturally the crypto most affected by this event.

This Thursday, the world's leading crypto exchange suffered a major cyberattack, with damage of more than $6.3 billion, of which $3 billion was frozen on the blockchain, its boss Richard Teng said this Friday. The company assures that Binance “will cover all losses”. “The exploitation of the vulnerability on Binance intensified sales across the entire market,” explains Dominick John, analyst at Zeus Research, to the specialist media The Block.

In fact, liquidations of long positions on cryptocurrencies involved more than 1.5 billion dollars. For the expert, the market recovery "depends on Binance's ability to restore confidence in the security of its platform and in customer funds." An already weakened bitcoin Bitcoin had already been going through a fairly complicated period in recent days.

Last week, the asset fell below $80,000, in a tense macroeconomic context. Investors' fear was particularly evident in the market for bitcoin spot ETFs, these financial products traded on Wall Street which allow exposure to the queen of cryptos without going through a crypto exchange.

Last Thursday, for example, investors sold more than $635 million in spot bitcoin ETFs. This is the largest daily sale since the end of June. As a reminder, on January 10, 2024, the American stock market watchdog (the SEC) authorized 11 spot bitcoin ETFs on Wall Street.

An ETF (or Exchange Traded Funds) is an index fund trading on a stock exchange which follows the evolution of a stock market index (or one or more financial or physical assets, such as gold) by replicating the rise or fall in the price of this index (or these assets).

Machine-translated from French