727 FinanceCan the SAFU fund, proof of reserves, and historical profits fill the funding gap?
Author: angelilu, Foresight News
On October 30, Binance announced that the preliminary loss from the security incident was approximately $6.3 billion, and stated that it would use the SAFU fund and corporate funds to fully cover user losses. The next question worth asking is: how large are these two funding sources, and can they promptly make up for the assets that were transferred out?
Previously, Binance disclosed that approximately $3 billion of the funds had been verified as frozen. If all of these assets are ultimately returned, based on the preliminary loss estimate of $6.3 billion, there would still be approximately $3.3 billion that needs to be covered through other channels. Before the return is completed, Binance also needs to prepare sufficient available funds to meet demand after withdrawals resume.
Where might this money come from? Binance's publicly disclosed SAFU fund, proof of reserves, and wallet lists provide several leads that can be further investigated.
$1 billion SAFU bought Bitcoin, but the appreciation is limited
Binance established the SAFU user security asset fund for extreme events such as hacker attacks. This is the most easily identifiable source of protection funds in this compensation.
On February 12 this year, Binance completed its plan to convert approximately $1 billion in stablecoins into Bitcoin, disclosing that SAFU held 15,000 BTC. Based on approximately $67,000 per coin at the time the conversion was completed, this asset was worth approximately $1.005 billion at that time.
Assuming SAFU still holds 15,000 BTC, based on today's estimate of $77,000 per coin, the fund is worth approximately $1.155 billion, an increase of approximately $150 million, or approximately 14.9%, from the time the conversion was completed.
Binance previously committed that when the value of SAFU falls below $800 million, it will replenish it to $1 billion. Based on the above holdings, the trigger price is approximately $53,300 per BTC. Based on this year's lowest BTC price of $57,802, the fund value would still be approximately $867 million, not yet reaching the replenishment threshold. Therefore, this article temporarily values it based on the original holdings; whether Binance has proactively added funds, and whether the fund has already been used in this incident, still need to be verified.
Even if all of this $1.155 billion is used for compensation, and the frozen $3 billion is ultimately fully returned, there would still be approximately $2.145 billion that needs to be borne by other funding sources.
In the proof of reserves, there is indeed some buffer
In addition to SAFU, Binance's proof of reserves page also discloses the amount by which some assets exceed the net balance of user accounts.
As of the time of this review, the latest visible snapshot is October 1, 2026, 00:00 UTC. Among these, "net account balance" is the net amount of user assets calculated by Binance under the proof-of-reserves methodology, and "on-chain wallet balance" is the amount of coins held in wallets used to support these assets. Subtracting the former from the latter shows how much the public reserves exceeded the net balance of user accounts at the time of that snapshot.
Among them, the excess of USDT and USDC combined is approximately $1.836 billion; the excess of BTC is 2,430.913 coins, worth approximately $187 million based on $77,000 per coin. ETH's balance almost exactly covers the net balance of user accounts.
This article also compiled Binance's publicly downloadable wallet files for October 1, and the balances of BTC, ETH, USDT, and USDC are all consistent with the reserves page. However, these data reflect the state at the beginning of the month. User deposits and withdrawals, trading, and platform transfers over the following nearly one month may all change these remaining amounts.
Binance also notes on the page that the amount of excess assets in the proof-of-reserves addresses does not represent the total amount of its own assets. Therefore, this table can show part of the reserve buffer, but cannot replace the company's complete financial statements.
On paper it is close to $6.3 billion, but the funds still need to actually be in place
According to Binance's description, SAFU is an emergency fund established for extreme situations and is explained separately from user asset reserves.
If SAFU is valued at $1.155 billion, plus the excess of approximately $1.836 billion in USDT and USDC at the beginning of the month, the remaining approximately $187 million in BTC, and approximately $3 billion in frozen assets, the mechanical sum of these figures is approximately $6.178 billion, and the records can catch up with the preliminary disclosed loss.
But this calculation can only be used to understand the scale. $6.178 billion is only the arithmetic total of several sets of public figures; SAFU uses previously disclosed holdings, the excess reserves use the beginning-of-month snapshot, and the frozen amount comes from post-incident tracking. The total has not yet been fully reconciled across the same point in time, address scope, and availability, and cannot be equated with the compensation funds Binance has already prepared.
The largest timing gap comes from the frozen assets.
Freezing can prevent attackers from continuing to transfer related funds and reduce the loss that ultimately cannot be recovered; for Binance to regain these assets, the corresponding return procedures still need to be completed. If withdrawals resume first, the platform will need to use other available funds to meet user demand.
Internal transfers can solve part of the liquidity issue. For example, transferring from cold wallets to hot wallets can replenish the balance needed for withdrawals. But after the platform's overall assets decrease due to the attack, merely moving funds between its own wallets cannot fill the loss in total amount.
To make up for this loss, it is necessary to recover assets, inject its own funds, or obtain external funding support. Which methods Binance ultimately adopts and how much each bears still lack full disclosure.
Profits over the years may form another part of the financial buffer
In addition to SAFU and public reserves, Binance may also use its own funds accumulated over years of operation. Exchanges continuously collect fees, and the profits left after deducting operating costs, if still retained in the company, can become a source of funds to bear losses.
Binance has publicly disclosed some profit figures in the past. In December 2020, then-CEO Changpeng Zhao told Bloomberg that Binance's profit in 2019 was approximately $570 million, and full-year profit in 2020 was expected to reach $800 million to $1 billion. These historical disclosures show that even when the business scale was smaller, Binance already had the ability to earn hundreds of millions of dollars in profit each year.
The market has also previously estimated Binance's profit scale through the amount of BNB quarterly burns. Under the original rule linked to 20% of quarterly profit, research institutions could multiply the burn amount by 5 to infer the corresponding profit. In a 2019 study, 21Shares estimated based on this that Binance's 2018 profit was approximately $447 million, while clearly stating that this was only an estimate of financial performance.
As the burn rules were adjusted, this observation path gradually became ineffective. In December 2021, Binance announced the introduction of BNB Auto-Burn, which automatically calculates the burn amount based on parameters such as the BNB price and the number of blocks produced in the quarter, and explicitly stated that the mechanism is independent of the revenue generated by Binance's centralized exchange through BNB. Therefore, the burn values of hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars in recent announcements can no longer be converted into Binance profits at a fixed multiple, nor can they indicate how much cash the company actually spent.
Peer financial reports can provide a reference. Coinbase's full-year net profit in 2025 was approximately $1.260 billion, and approximately $2.579 billion in 2024. This shows that large crypto trading platforms can accumulate billion-dollar-level profits in profitable years, and retained operating earnings may constitute an important financial buffer beyond emergency funds.
However, directly treating Coinbase's profit as the lower bound of Binance's profitability is still insufficiently supported. In addition to trading volume, actual fee levels, business revenue composition, operating costs, and investment gains and losses all affect final profit. Coinbase's data can help understand the profit scale of this industry, but how much funding Binance itself has accumulated that can be used for compensation still needs support from its financial disclosures.
In addition, the personal wealth of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao is also a potential source of support that the outside world is watching. Forbes' estimate of his net worth as of October 29, 2026, is approximately $114.6 billion, with sources of wealth including Binance equity and BNB holdings. Changpeng Zhao stepped down as Binance CEO in 2023 but remains a shareholder. The above net worth includes equity and token valuations, and the amount of cash that can be immediately mobilized has not been disclosed; if it is to be used to support this compensation, an actual funding arrangement would still be needed and cannot be directly counted as Binance's existing protection funds.