Bitcoin held up better than expected after record Binance hack, Strive CEO says

Strive CEO stands by Bitcoin after record Binance breach

Strive CEO Matt Cole says Bitcoin has held up better than he expected after the hack of Binance, a major crypto exchange (a platform for buying and selling crypto). Speaking on Cointelegraph's Chain Reaction show on Friday, Cole said the attack does not change his long-term investment case for Bitcoin, though he warned it is too early to call a market bottom.

Cole compared the attack on Binance's wallets to a bank robbery rather than a failure of Bitcoin's own network. Strive, a publicly traded company that holds Bitcoin on its balance sheet, reported owning 43,000 BTC as of Oct. 23.

Key points

• The Binance hack affected around $6.3 billion and was the largest crypto hack on record, per Glassnode — bigger than the next nine largest hacks combined.


• Bitcoin traded near $77,400 at 4:00 pm on Saturday, about 4% below its price shortly before the attack began Thursday, according to CoinGecko.


• Cole said the drop was less severe than he expected given the scale of the breach, but a bottom is not confirmed.


• He expects an "early spring" recovery phase that could last another six to nine months, with gradual rises rather than new highs.


• Both Cole and a security expert stress that Bitcoin's network itself was not hacked — the attack hit one company's systems.

What Cole said about his long-term view

"I do have conviction that over any reasonable time frame, this does not change the investment thesis on Bitcoin," Cole said on the show. These are his opinions as an investor, not confirmed market facts.

How this price reaction compares to past hacks

According to Glassnode, the Thursday breach was the largest cryptocurrency hack on record, with around $6.3 billion affected. The previous record was the $1.5 billion Bybit exploit in February 2025. Glassnode also noted that three of the 10 largest crypto hacks have happened since the start of 2025, and all involved exchanges.

History shows exchanges are the usual weak point. After the Bybit hack, Bitcoin fell roughly 5% from nearly $100,000 to around $95,000, according to a Bitfinex market report. Data from Anchorage Digital cited by CNBC put Bitcoin's average first-24-hour decline after previous exchange exploits at 8.3% — larger than this week's roughly 4% dip.

What investigators think happened at Binance

Blockaid CEO Ido Ben-Natan said the attackers appeared to have compromised Binance's transaction signing process — the step where the exchange approves outgoing transactions from its wallets. Blockaid's analysis found an Ethereum transaction containing 50 signed authorizations covering different transaction counts, and a matching authorization let attacker-controlled code operate through a wallet. Ben-Natan argued that checks before signing could have blocked the malicious authorization.

Binance said Friday that it found no evidence of leaked wallet private keys (the secret codes that control a crypto wallet), though its investigation was still ongoing. That makes the exact cause unconfirmed.

Why this matters for Bitcoin holders

The takeaway from both Cole and Paul Chapman, financial crime director at Wirex, is the same: this was an attack on one company's systems, not on Bitcoin's network. "It's important to be clear that Bitcoin itself hasn't been hacked — this was an attack on one company's systems, not the network," Chapman told Cointelegraph. Still, the record size of the breach and the pattern of repeated exchange hacks since 2025 keep the focus on how exchanges secure customer funds.

Sources

• Cointelegraph

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Read also: Binance Replaces 90% of $6.3 Billion in Stolen Crypto, Plans to Resume Withdrawals Nov. 1