Bitcoin Sinks Below $77K as Liquidations Top $1.5B After Binance Hack

Bitcoin fell below $77,000 on Thursday, and more than $1.5 billion in leveraged crypto bets were wiped out over 24 hours. The selloff came as Binance dealt with a hack that it estimated had affected about $6.3 billion in crypto assets.

Most of the damage landed on traders betting that prices would keep rising. By Friday morning the market had clawed some of it back, with Bitcoin returning toward $78,500 and Ether trading around $2,240.

How Far Bitcoin, Ether and XRP Fell

Bitcoin's intraday low came in at roughly $76,400 to $76,500. Ether briefly dropped below $2,200.

XRP fell hard as well, but reports of its low don't agree. Published figures range from about $1.21 to $1.26, and neither has been confirmed yet.

The drop extends a slide that was already under way. Our earlier report on Bitcoin's drop below $80,000 tracked liquidations at a smaller scale.

Why a Price Drop Turns Into $1.5 Billion in Liquidations

A liquidation is what happens when a leveraged trade runs out of room. A trader puts up some collateral, borrows to make the position bigger, and the exchange closes the trade automatically once losses eat through that collateral. Those forced closures sell into a falling market, which can push prices lower still and trip the next set of positions.

Two published snapshots of CoinGlass data put the 24-hour total at $1.54 billion to $1.55 billion, spread across roughly 237,000 to 246,000 traders. Long positions, the bets on higher prices, made up $1.29 billion to $1.34 billion of it. The event totals couldn't be checked on CoinGlass directly, because its live page now shows only the current 24-hour window.

By coin, the snapshots line up closely:

• Bitcoin: about $499 million liquidated
• Ether: about $359 million
• Solana: about $83 million
• XRP: about $38 million

Binance Was Both the Victim and the Biggest Venue

Here's the detail that stands out. Binance, the exchange that was hacked, also handled about $754.6 million of the liquidations, nearly half the market total. The same platform was absorbing a security incident and closing out a large share of the market's leveraged bets at once.

Binance estimated that about $6.3 billion in crypto assets had been affected. It suspended deposits and withdrawals while it investigated and said it would cover customer losses.

Blockchain analytics firms TRM Labs and Elliptic linked the attack to hackers associated with North Korea. That's their attribution; Binance's own account of who was behind it hasn't been confirmed.

Binance Begins Restoring Withdrawals Across Networks

Binance has begun restoring withdrawals in phases, so the exchange is no longer blocking all withdrawals. As of its latest update, withdrawals are available for BTC, ETH, BNB, XRP, DOGE, SOL, TRX, and several supported stablecoins across networks including Bitcoin, Ethereum, BNB Chain, XRP Ledger, Solana, Tron, Base, Optimism, and Arbitrum.

The exchange has also newly re-enabled withdrawals for POL, USDT, and USDC on Polygon, along with AVAX, USDT, and USDC on Avalanche C-Chain. Binance said it would continue restoring additional assets and networks as security checks are completed.

The phased reopening is an important step toward restoring normal operations, but withdrawals are not yet available across every network and asset. Users should check Binance's official channels for the latest availability before attempting a transfer.