Musk Mocks Binance's $6.3 Billion Hack on X: CZ Tells Him to Stop and Cites a $1 Billion SpaceX Stake
Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, disclosed on October 29 that about $6.3 billion in assets had been stolen, and the story became one of the hottest topics on X. Elon Musk, who owns X, did not let it pass: when Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) posted a warning on October 28 telling users not to click suspicious email links or download attachments, Musk replied with fire and laughing emojis. When another user juxtaposed Zhao's reassurances with statements Sam Bankman-Fried made before FTX collapsed, Musk left a grimacing emoji underneath. He also posted, on its own: "Everyday is Zeroday."
On October 30, Zhao answered him by name. "Elon, have a lot of respect for you, but bad time to troll. Please stop," he wrote on X. "Our SPCX shares (from our $500m investment in your Twitter takeover) are worth more than a billion. Would appreciate if you show a little support. Thanks!"
The stake dates to 2022, when Binance put $500 million into Musk's takeover of Twitter, now X; the investment later converted into SpaceX shares. In a separate post the same day, Zhao laid out his math: of the roughly $6.3 billion affected, about $3 billion had been frozen, the exchange held more than $1 billion in its SAFU user-protection fund, and with the SpaceX stake counted, the remaining gap was about $2 billion: "painful but manageable." Binance co-CEO Yi He added that the company's annual revenue was enough to cover the losses and that it did not need to sell the SpaceX shares.
On October 31, Zhao posted again to cool things down, saying he had never talked about selling the SpaceX shares and had mentioned them only because the thread's FTX comparison implied Binance lacked funds, "which is not true." "I don't make threats," he wrote, calling Musk "one of the strongest builders in the world": "Fight with one of the strongest builders in the world? No thx. Let's fight the North Korean hackers." Blockchain analytics firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis had attributed the theft to TraderTraitor, a North Korea-linked hacking group, and the FBI formally concluded on October 31 that North Korea was behind the heist.
The exchange drew a huge crowd on X, with crypto and mainstream financial outlets following every post; X executive Nikita Bier joined in, riffing on Zhao's signature "Funds are SAFU" line. Musk had not publicly responded to Zhao's appeal as of publication.
Related: $6.3 Billion Stolen: Binance Hit by the Largest Crypto Theft on Record, About $3 Billion Frozen, Full Reimbursement Pledged; FBI Formally Concludes North Korea Stole More Than $6 Billion From Binance
Source: GSM · USA
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：币安创始人赵长鹏2022年11月在葡萄牙里斯本Web Summit峰会上发言。（图：Piaras Ó Mídheach／Web Summit via Sportsfile／Wikimedia Commons，CC BY 2.0）/ Binance founder Changpeng Zhao speaking at Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, in November 2022. (Photo: Piaras Ó Mídheach / Web Summit via Sportsfile / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0)
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- 2026-10-31Musk Mocks Binance's $6.3 Billion Hack on X: CZ Tells Him to Stop and Cites a $1 Billion SpaceX StakeThis story
