Ether (ETH) fell 4% after Binance disclosed a major breach, a milder decline than after the 2025 ByBit hack, Bitmine Chairman Thomas “Tom” Lee said.
Binance put the breach’s estimated impact at about $6.3 billion, a measure distinct from a confirmed total of stolen funds. Lee compared it with roughly $1.5 billion in customer crypto he said was stolen in the ByBit attack in February 2025, which he attributed to North Korea. Lee said ETH dropped 8% on the day that theft was announced and was down 20% a week later. For Binance, he said, Ether had declined 4% since the incident was disclosed.
Lee said he saw six reasons for the difference in market response and regarded the comparison with ByBit as evidence of a changed reaction to a large crypto theft. He also said the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) had identified North Korea (DPRK) as the perpetrator of the Binance attack.
The comparison pairs different loss measures: Binance’s figure is an estimated impact, while the ByBit number Lee cited is the amount of customer crypto he said was stolen. It also compares Ether’s price moves after public disclosures with reported theft size, a distinction that matters because the Binance figure is an impact estimate.
Bitmine paired Lee’s market assessment with a treasury snapshot. It said an 8,573 ETH purchase in its latest weekly report followed a pattern dating to June 30, 2025, the start of its Ether Treasury Strategy. The company said it had bought every week during that period.
At 4 p.m. ET Nov. 1, the company put treasury total value at $14.5 billion and listed 6,060,506 ETH, equal to 4.9% of the ETH supply. It valued ETH at $2,261 using Coinbase pricing. Bitmine said 5,227,037 ETH was staked, equal to 86% of its Ether, and valued that amount at $11.8 billion. The company projected $358 million in annualized staking revenue, using a 3.03% seven-day yield.
