Bitcoin’s price resilience after Binance’s record $6.3 billion hack has prompted a fresh debate over what such incidents really mean for the network versus individual platforms. Strive CEO Matt Cole said the breach has not altered his long-term investment thesis for Bitcoin, framing the event as a targeted attack on an exchange rather than a failure of cryptocurrency’s underlying technology.
Cole’s comments came in an interview on Cointelegraph’s Chain Reaction on Friday. During the aftermath of the hack, Bitcoin traded around $77,400 as of Saturday at 4:00 pm, according to CoinGecko price data—about 4% below its level shortly before the Thursday incident began.
Key takeaways
- Strive CEO Matt Cole argues the Binance hack is an exchange security breach, not an attack on Bitcoin itself.
- Bitcoin held up better than some expected declines, though investors should watch for confirmation of whether a market bottom has formed.
- Glassnode data cited by Cointelegraph says the Binance incident is the largest crypto hack on record, with exchange-related attacks dominating major historical losses.
- Industry experts highlighted that past major exchange exploits have tended to produce short-term drawdowns, but not network-wide impairment.
Cole: the thesis remains intact despite a major exchange breach
Cole said the scale of the Binance breach had not changed his long-term view of Bitcoin. In his framing, the attack resembles a bank robbery—something that can happen to a particular institution—rather than evidence that the broader financial system has stopped working.
He also suggested the market decline was less severe than he expected given both the magnitude of the hack and wider weakness across crypto markets. At the same time, Cole acknowledged that it was too early to determine whether Bitcoin had reached a durable price bottom.
Looking ahead, Cole described the market as being in an “early spring” recovery phase that could persist for another six to nine months. Rather than expecting a rapid re-test of all-time highs, he said the more likely path is gradual improvement over time.
For context on why Cole’s perspective carries weight, Strive is a publicly traded firm that holds Bitcoin on its balance sheet. The company reported owning 43,000 BTC as of Oct. 23, per the figures referenced in the report.
Why investors differentiate between “Bitcoin” and “exchanges”
Several participants in the coverage emphasized the same distinction: the Binance breach did not equal a compromise of Bitcoin’s core network. Wirex’s financial crime director Paul Chapman drew a sharp line between attacks on a company’s internal systems and an actual hack of the cryptocurrency protocol.
“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. That distinction matters for investors because it separates two types of risk: platform-level operational and custody vulnerabilities on one hand, and systemic risks to the blockchain on the other.
Even when the market reacts strongly to exchange incidents, analysts and executives typically treat these events as reminders to reassess counterparty safety, wallet management, and signing processes—rather than as evidence that Bitcoin’s consensus is broken.
How the Binance hack compares with past exchange exploits
According to Glassnode, Thursday’s Binance breach was the largest cryptocurrency hack on record, with around $6.3 billion affected—more than the combined losses from the next nine largest crypto hacks. Glassnode also noted that three of the 10 largest crypto hacks occurred since the beginning of 2025, and each involved exchanges.
The earlier record referenced in the reporting was the $1.5 billion Bybit exploit in February 2025. The comparison is instructive because it shows how exchange-driven disruptions have repeatedly shaped short-term price action without necessarily changing long-term network assumptions.
After the Bybit hack, Bitcoin fell about 5% from nearly $100,000 to around $95,000 during the period of breach-related volatility, according to a Bitfinex market report. Additional context comes from data Anchorage Digital cited by CNBC, which put Bitcoin’s average decline in the first 24 hours after previous crypto exchange exploits at 8.3%.
In that light, the post-Binance drawdown observed in the immediate trading window—around 4% from before the incident began at the time the Saturday reading was recorded—appears comparatively milder, though traders will still be watching whether broader risk conditions worsen or stabilize.
Security analysts point to transaction-signing compromise, not leaked keys
While the market focus is often on headlines and price swings, technical reporting in the coverage underscored that the nature of the breach is crucial for understanding where defenses failed.
Blockaid CEO Ido Ben-Natan said the attackers appeared to have compromised Binance’s transaction signing process. Binance, according to the coverage, said it had found no evidence of leaked wallet private keys, though its investigation was ongoing.
Ben-Natan’s analysis, as reported, described an Ethereum transaction that contained 50 signed authorizations tied to different transaction counts. A matching authorization reportedly enabled attacker-controlled code to execute through the wallet. Ben-Natan argued that checks before signing could have prevented the malicious authorization from being approved.
Whether or not Binance’s implementation details ultimately align with that interpretation, the takeaway for builders and users is clear: even without leaked private keys, systems that authorize transactions through software signing flows can still be attacked if safeguards are insufficient.
For the months ahead, the key thing market participants will watch is whether Bitcoin’s stabilization after the Binance incident proves durable—Cole suggested a gradual recovery window—alongside whether exchanges accelerate improvements in signing, authorization controls, and incident transparency. Until investigators close remaining gaps, the biggest uncertainty is less about Bitcoin’s network integrity and more about how quickly the broader industry can reduce the likelihood of similar failures.
