Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, criticised Elon Musk on Friday after the billionaire appeared to mock the exchange following a $6.4 billion hack — the largest in history — reminding him that Binance holds SpaceX shares worth more than $1 billion.
"Elon, I have a lot of respect for you, but this is a bad time for jokes. Please stop," CZ wrote on X. "Our SPCX shares (from our $500 million investment in the Twitter acquisition) are worth over a billion. I'd appreciate it if you showed a bit of support. Thanks!"
The exchange was reacting to Musk's response to a post estimating that, since a large share of the stolen funds had been frozen, Binance's losses could reach around $1 billion, despite the exchange holding roughly $144 billion in assets under custody.
Musk had responded to the thread with a grimace emoji, prompting another user to share an old post by former FTX chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried, claiming his exchange had enough money to cover its losses. FTX famously collapsed weeks later.
CZ had initially responded to the loss estimate by saying the damage could be a bit higher, but that Binance would still be able to cover it. Musk's emoji appeared to draw an uncomfortable parallel with the FTX episode, though he did not spell out what he meant.
For his part, CZ did not hint at anything further about what Binance might do with its SpaceX shares.
Binance co-CEO Yi He also weighed in, addressing CZ in a post that appeared to respond to the suggestion that the company might need to liquidate its SpaceX holdings.
"Reporting to the major shareholder: Our company's revenue for the year is sufficient to cover the losses, so we do not yet need to sell the SpaceX shares you are bullish on," she wrote, adding a shrugging emoji.
CZ later clarified that he had never suggested selling the shares. He said he was simply showing Musk some of the funds Binance had available, hoping to reassure him about the exchange's financial position.
The exchange is reeling from the largest crypto theft ever recorded. At least $6.4 billion in crypto was drained from wallets associated with the exchange on Thursday, 29 October, across several blockchains.
Earlier reports had shown that at least $5.57 billion had left Binance-linked wallets on Ethereum, Bitcoin and Tron. The attackers moved funds through multiple transactions, including a transfer of more than $1.6 billion in USDT to a newly created Ethereum address.
The incident also exposed a significant weakness in how cryptocurrencies can be recovered after a theft. Tether and Circle, the companies behind the USDT and USDC stablecoins, froze approximately $1.8 billion in assets linked to the attackers in their initial response, and subsequently froze a total of $2.39 billion. Unlike those tokens, Ethereum cannot be frozen by a central issuer, making it harder to stop stolen funds once they are converted.
Read also: Binance hack: how attackers stole $6 billion in just 20 minutes
The attackers subsequently used decentralised exchanges such as Uniswap and the Aave lending protocol to move funds into Ethereum. These platforms allow users to trade or borrow cryptocurrencies without relying on a traditional intermediary to approve each transaction. Decrypt traced wallets that received tens of thousands of ETH through these operations, including 19,762 ETH borrowed against roughly $60 million in USDT.
The alleged attackers have also been linked to North Korea. In a report published Friday, blockchain analytics firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking group previously blamed for the $1.5 billion hack of Bybit in February 2025. Chainalysis put the Binance theft at approximately $6.4 billion.
Binance has since said it has set aside more than $6.34 billion in company funds to cover the incident, including $5 billion already held in the same tokens that were stolen. The exchange said it is acquiring the remaining assets through market and over-the-counter (OTC) purchases, which may take longer given limited liquidity in certain tokens.
* Translated and edited with permission from Decrypt.
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