Binance starts phased withdrawals as reserve proof remains incomplete

Binance began reopening cryptocurrency withdrawals in phases on Sunday, November 1, restoring an important route for customers to move assets off the exchange after a security incident prompted a temporary suspension. The operational change matters more than a timetable alone: withdrawal access is the practical test of whether customers can convert an account balance into an externally controlled asset.

The exchange’s November 1 notice scheduled the first phase between 06:00 and 09:00 UTC. CBS News, carrying Agence France-Presse reporting, said the first batch had opened by 5:00 a.m. Eastern time, or 10:00 UTC, and identified bitcoin, ether, BNB, XRP, Dogecoin, Base and Optimism among the restored assets or networks. Binance warned that availability would roll out progressively and that users could encounter delays.

What reopened — and what did not

Binance’s planned first phase covered bitcoin on Bitcoin; ether and major stablecoins on Ethereum; BNB and stablecoins on BNB Smart Chain; and selected assets on Tron, Solana, XRP Ledger, Zcash, Dogecoin, TON, Polygon, Avalanche C-Chain, Arbitrum, Base, Optimism and Sui.

That list should not be read as a universal reopening. The company said each asset-network pair would become available only as checks were completed, and additional networks would follow later. Its public network-status page carried a November 1 update time but did not expose asset-level records in Coinburn’s web check, so it could not independently establish the live status of every pair.

Deposits remained open throughout the interruption, according to Binance. Withdrawals are different: they reduce assets held inside the exchange and require the venue to sign and broadcast transfers on the relevant network. A phased reopening therefore restores customer mobility, but it does not show that normal processing speed, full network coverage or unrestricted capacity has returned.

Binance says replacement purchases reached 95%

Binance estimated the incident’s total impact at about $6.3 billion in an October 30 update. In Sunday’s recovery notice, it said it had replaced approximately 95% of the affected amount, up from 90% in its October 31 update. The company said the remaining 5% consisted of less-liquid tokens outside a group of ten major assets and was still being purchased through market and over-the-counter channels.

Those percentages are company-reported recovery measures, not an independent valuation. Binance has not disclosed in the opened records the asset-by-asset quantities, acquisition prices, counterparties or valuation method behind the 95% calculation. The figure also describes replacement of affected assets, not recovery from the attacker.

The exchange separately said BTC, ETH, USDT, BNB, SOL, USDC, XRP, USD1, RLUSD and ZEC balances were fully backed. Its October 31 reserve snapshot was taken at 00:00 UTC. Binance said generating the complete zero-knowledge proof would require 40 to 50 hours and was expected to finish on November 3 UTC.

The remaining verification gap

Proof of reserves can let customers check that their balances were included in a liability set and compare that set with disclosed reserve assets. It remains a point-in-time test. Before the complete proof is available, the snapshot does not independently establish the exchange’s full post-incident liabilities, the quality and control of every reserve asset, or the durability of backing after the snapshot.

Binance also said it used its own resources, part of its Secure Asset Fund for Users and part of its futures insurance fund in the replacement process. It said the futures fund remained above its internal required protection level, but the opened notice did not provide an independent stress test or assurance opinion for that claim.

The narrow conclusion on November 1 is that customer withdrawals have started returning, not that the recovery is complete. The next verifiable milestones are broader asset-network availability, publication of the promised full reserve proof and a post-incident report explaining the failure and remediation. No price move is attributed to the reopening because this report did not establish a consistent venue, instrument and measurement window for such a comparison.