CZ’s comments take away part of the uncertainty but not the core risk. He has confirmed a likely hack, while the person who can commit Binance’s money to cover losses has said nothing yet. The stablecoin freezes shrink the possible loss, but the ether moved out of Binance has no such protection. BNB is the clearest gauge of how worried traders are, and it is likely to stay under pressure until Binance commits to covering losses. Bitcoin and ether are falling with the rest of the market rather than for a reason specific to them, so they could recover faster if Binance gives clear reassurance.---Earlier:Tether freezes $971M USDT amid suspected Binance hack as crypto sells off---CZ calls it a hack and says user funds are safe, Tether and Circle have locked up $1.79 billion, and Binance has yet to say how much it lost.Summary:Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said the exchange appears to have been hacked and that user funds are safe.Tether froze about $971 million in USDT and Circle froze about $823 million in USDC, around $1.79 billion in total.CZ said he no longer runs Binance but, as a shareholder, expects all user funds to be fully covered. This is not a formal pledge from Binance.Binance said it is investigating a potential security issue. It has not confirmed the losses or how the transfers happened.More than $2 billion moved from Binance wallets to a new address, including about 167,000 ETH, which can’t be frozen.BNB fell about 6% to near $710. Bitcoin dropped about 2% and ether about 3%.Binance appears to have been hacked, co-founder Changpeng Zhao said on Thursday, 29 October, as stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle froze about $1.79 billion in tokens linked to more than $2 billion that left the exchange’s wallets. Zhao, widely known as CZ, said user funds are safe.In a post on X, Zhao said the activity does look like a hack on Binance. He thanked Tether for freezing roughly $971 million in USDT and Circle for freezing about $823 million in USDC. He added that he no longer manages Binance but, as a shareholder, expects all user funds to be fully covered. Zhao stepped down as chief executive in 2023, so his comments are not a formal reimbursement pledge from the exchange.Binance itself has gone less far. In a statement on X, it said its teams were aware of reports of a potential security issue and were actively investigating, Cryptowisser reported. It did not confirm a breach, the amount involved or how the transfers happened.Crypto prices fell as the news spread. Binance’s own BNB token, which is used for trading-fee discounts on the exchange and to pay fees on its affiliated BNB Chain blockchain, was hit hardest among the large caps. It was down almost 6% near $710, according to Cryptowisser price data. Bitcoin was down about 2% near $79,400, and ether lost about 3% to around $2,280. CoinGlass data cited by Crypto News Flash showed about $620 million in liquidations in one hour as the reports broke, roughly 97% of them long positions.On-chain data first circulated by market news account Walter Bloomberg showed about $2.77 billion leaving Binance wallets across five blockchains. Coindoo, checking Etherscan, found two large Ethereum transfers to the same newly created address. One came from a wallet labelled Binance 14 and included about 167,000 ETH and roughly 1.6 billion USDT. The second was 780 million USDC from a Binance hot wallet. On-chain investigators claim the receiving address was funded through Tornado Cash, a mixing service that hides where funds come from, though that remains unverified.The freezes matter because they put a large share of the stolen stablecoins out of the attacker’s reach. Tether and Circle can block addresses through controls built into their token contracts, which stops frozen tokens from moving. The ether in the flow, worth roughly $380 million at current prices, has no such safeguard, and frozen funds are not automatically returned to their owners.The key questions now are how much Binance actually lost once the freezes are counted, whether withdrawals continue normally, and whether Binance itself commits to covering any losses. If confirmed at anything near the reported scale, the incident would rank among the largest crypto thefts on record. This article was written by Eamonn Sheridan at investinglive.com.