The 7,500 BTC That Left Binance's SAFU Fund Has Moved Again

The 7,500 BTC that left Binance's Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) on October 31 has moved again. At 05:56 UTC on November 3, the address that first received the coins sent 7,499.99999322 BTC in a single transaction to the address bc1qhp7n555hk5mxlp3pz0347nzah8gazwe7wp5fjj.

If you keep funds on Binance, SAFU is the reserve that is supposed to stand behind user balances. Its bitcoin address now holds about 7,500 BTC, which is half the 15,000 BTC it held after Binance converted the fund in February. The coins that left are now one more step away from the address Binance publishes. Nothing on-chain says yet who controls them or what they are for.

How the Coins Left the Fund

The first move came from the SAFU bitcoin address that Binance publishes, 1BAuq7Vho2CEkVkUxbfU26LhwQjbCmWQkD. It went out in two transactions on October 31. A 1 BTC transfer went at 14:45 UTC, and the remaining 7,499 BTC followed six minutes later at 14:51 UTC.

That outflow cut the fund's bitcoin holdings in half after the hack. The November 3 transfer then moved the whole amount on in one go, rather than in pieces.

At early-November bitcoin prices, the roughly 7,500 BTC still in SAFU is worth somewhere between $575 million and $583 million, depending on the price used.

What the Chain Does Not Tell You Yet

Several things that matter to Binance users are still open:

• Who owns the receiving address. It has handled heavy traffic. The two available counts of its lifetime transactions differ: one puts it at about 1,900, the other at more than 2,400. It has not been tied to a named exchange, custodian or trading desk. A transfer on its own does not show that any bitcoin was sold.
• Where the coins went next. Reports that the bitcoin was broken into smaller pieces later on November 3 and moved on again have not been independently confirmed on-chain.
• What the money is for. It could not be confirmed from Binance's own announcements whether these coins are being used to cover losses from the hack. The same goes for whether, or when, Binance will refill the fund. Binance's own SAFU page could not be accessed to check its rules for topping the fund up.

The fund's public address is the thing to watch. It still holds about 7,500 BTC, and because that address is public, any further outflow will show up on-chain whether or not Binance explains it first.