Binance suffered a hack on Oct. 30, 2026, with preliminary losses estimated at $6.3 billion, surpassing the February 2025 attack on Bybit as the crypto industry’s largest reported breach. Binance said it would cover all losses through its Secure Asset Fund for Users and its own reserves, while cooperating with law enforcement.

The exchange initially suspected a compromised employee laptop, but a subsequent investigation identified other possible routes into its systems. Deposits continued normally, while withdrawals remained suspended and were expected to resume within 48 hours of Binance’s announcement. The company said further outflows stopped after the suspension and that it and its partners had frozen about $3 billion.

Bitcoin trades near $78,000

Bitcoin traded mostly between $79,500 and about $82,000 during the week before falling to $76,000 overnight on Oct. 30 amid the Binance hack. At the time of writing, it was near $78,035, according to TradingView.

Galaxy Digital research head Alex Thorn said bitcoin’s bear market ended in June 2026 and that the asset had entered an accumulation phase. He cited technical indicators, long-term holder behavior and reduced exposure among institutional investors. Galaxy said long-term fundamentals remained intact but identified the loss of a key technical level, spot exchange-traded fund outflows and quantum-computing threats as risks.

CryptoQuant said traders’ realized price, averaging about $70,000, could provide support during a correction. Retail inflows to Binance rose from $5.5 billion to $10.75 billion over 30 days, their highest level in six months, while inflows from large holders fell from $5.9 billion to $3.8 billion. CryptoQuant also said bitcoin was in the early stage of a bull cycle because a signal involving coins dormant for more than 18 months had not yet formed.

Venture investor Jason Calacanis predicted bitcoin would fall to $57,000 over the next 12 months and would not reach another all-time high. He described Bitcoin as a network that was not evolving and said capital would move toward artificial intelligence, including Bittensor.

Stacks co-founder Muneeb Ali said uncertainty over Bitcoin’s quantum security could deter institutional investment. He urged developers to prepare a transition roadmap for quantum-resistant security, citing 2030 as a benchmark while warning that artificial intelligence could accelerate quantum-computing development.

Bitwise raised its 2036 bitcoin forecast from $1.3 million to $1.6 million and estimated a potential compound annual return of 34.3%. Its base case assumes bitcoin captures 25% of the global store-of-value market and 1% of institutional investment assets.

A solo miner using about 16.4 TH/s of computing power found a block through CKPool and received 3.14 BTC, then worth about $251,906. CKPool analyst Con Kolivas said it was the pool’s 318th block found by a solo miner and estimated the miner’s annual odds at less than one in 3,400.

Anthropic files for Nasdaq listing

Anthropic, developer of the Claude artificial-intelligence assistant, filed an S-1 registration statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for an initial public offering. It plans to list Class A shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under ANT, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley as lead underwriters. The share count, price range and offering date remain undetermined.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin supported excluding advanced offensive cyber capabilities from the training data for the Kimi 3.1 model. He urged developers to strengthen defenses, audit legacy code and formally verify new software before more powerful cyberattack tools emerge.

Google released Chrome 156 to fix 52 vulnerabilities, including four critical issues, some identified using Anthropic’s Claude models and OpenAI’s Codex Security. Anthropic previously demonstrated an experimental Claude model chaining vulnerabilities to bypass Chrome protections and execute code outside the browser without further user action.

Corporate Europe Observatory and LobbyControl reported 655 meetings involving lobbyists and the European Parliament over the Digital Omnibus package. They said proposed changes could broaden companies’ use of personal data to train and operate AI models without separate consent.

Fed holds rates

The Federal Reserve held rates at 3.75% to 4% after its Oct. 28 meeting. Ten Federal Open Market Committee members supported the decision, while Lisa Cook and Beth Hammack favored a 25-basis-point increase. Bitcoin fell below $80,000 the following day.

The Fed said U.S. economic activity was expanding strongly, domestic spending remained resilient and capital investment was substantial. Labor-market conditions had changed little, while inflation remained elevated. The central bank said incoming data would guide policy aimed at returning inflation to 2%.

Network and custody developments

BNB Chain plans to launch a high-performance Layer 1 network alongside, rather than replacing, BNB Smart Chain. A testnet is scheduled for late 2026 and mainnet for early 2027. The unnamed network will connect to BSC through a native bridge and use BNB for fees, staking and governance. Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao said, “Multiple networks, one coin.”

Google introduced Google Multi-Party Compute for banks and other financial institutions handling cryptocurrencies and tokenized assets. The system divides private keys among independent systems. Major institutions are testing it, and Alphabet uses it to protect assets on Ethereum and Solana ahead of a planned commercial launch in early 2027.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said at Ripple Swell 2026 that crypto development and dollar-denominated stablecoins could strengthen the dollar’s global position and demand for U.S. government bonds. He also discussed the CLARITY Act and further market regulation by the SEC and Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

Source: Incrypted