Macro Bites – Binance Reports $6.3 Billion Hack, Suspends Deposits and Withdrawals

Binance has suffered the largest cryptocurrency hack in history, with an estimated $6.3B in digital assets compromised.  The massive security breach began on 10/29, forcing the exchange to immediately suspend all deposits and withdrawals.  Blockchain analytics firms have attributed the attack to an elite North Korean state-sponsored hacking unit (TraderTraitor/Lazarus Group).  The hack is the latest in a slew of security incidents afflicting the financial sector.  Binance said in a Friday post that about $3B of the assets had been frozen on blockchain networks and pledged to cover all losses.  In another post, co-founder Yi He said withdrawals were expected to resume by Sunday.

A surprise Bank of Japan Statement on Monetary Policy announced on ​Friday it would ‌sell about 860B yen ($5.45B) in ETF’s ​per year on ​a book value basis, ⁠accelerating the annual sale pace from the prior 330B yen ($2.1B).  The scale of the annual sales will rise from roughly 0.05% to 0.1% of total market trading volume.  At the new pace, it will ​now ​take ⁠about 43 years for the BOJ to complete ​sales of its ​ETF ⁠holdings, versus the previously estimated 112 years.

Xi watch:  At the Chinese Communist Party’s Fifth Plenum held this week (10/26-10/29) at the Jingshi military hotel in Beijing China expelled a record 33 officials from the CCP, with the unprecedented number of empty seats indicating the scale of ongoing purges by Xi Jinping.  Just 279 full and alternate members of the CCP’s Central Committee attended this week’s gathering, compared with 376 members originally selected in ’22 (meaning more than one-quarter of the original cohort have been purged).

The Plenum adopted a core document focused on strengthening internal party discipline, governance, and ideology. The policies emphasize combating formalism, bureaucratism, lavish dining, illicit gifts, and vanity projects while demanding absolute political loyalty to the party leadership under General Secretary Xi.

On the sidelines of the Russia-Africa Summit in Moscow on 10/29 (attended by President Putin and Ghanaian President John Dramani Mahama), Russian aluminum giant Rusal and state-owned Ghana Integrated Aluminum Development Corp. signed a landmark agreement to develop a multi-billion-dollar bauxite mining operation and an alumina refinery in Ghana.  The partnership marks a massive strategic shift for both nations, establishing two new joint ventures—Nyinahini Bauxite and Ghana Alumina Company—in which Rusal will hold a majority stake.

Indonesian Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry official Tri Winarno announced Thursday that Indonesian coal miners will no longer be able to meet domestic sales obligations by supplying coal to off-grid power plants, in a move expected to improve coal supply to the on-grid power sector, which has been struggling with outages.  Under Indonesia’s so-called “domestic market obligation” scheme, coal miners are required to sell at least 25% of their output to domestic buyers at capped prices.

Liquidity watch: Bank reserves at the Fed dropped to $2.894T in the week ended 10/28, the lowest since Dec. ‘25 when the Fed started its Reserve Management Purchases (RMP), injecting roughly $250B into the financial system.

AI watch: Amazon is down 7.5% in early Friday trading after saying it burned $42.4B of cash in Q3, up from $7.6B in Q2 and positive free cash flow of $14.8B in Q3 ’25. Amazon Web Services continued to accelerate but the company's aggressive spending overshadowed broader growth.