The Binance hack knocked about $100 billion off crypto — and the timing has a familiar ring: Chart of the Day

Binance's record hack sent crypto's market value sliding this week. It came at almost the same point where crypto's past bear markets hit bottom.

The world's largest crypto exchange said about $6.3 billion in assets were affected in a breach that began late Thursday afternoon , and that the exchange will cover all user losses. Investigators linked the attack to North Korea. It's more than four times the size of the previous record — the roughly $1.5 billion stolen from Bybit in February 2025.

Total crypto market value fell from nearly $2.7 trillion before the hack to below $2.6 trillion by midday Friday, according to CoinMarketCap.

Ether ( ETH-USD ) and BNB ( BNB-USD ), the token tied to Binance's own network, fell harder than bitcoin ( BTC-USD ) this week.

Zoom out, and the timing echoes crypto's past downturns.

The market peaked at a record of nearly $4.3 trillion on Oct. 7, 2025, and is now about 39% below that level. Crypto's past three bear markets bottomed 11 to 13 months after their peaks, in January 2015, December 2018, and November 2022. The Binance hack struck nearly 13 months in.

The closest parallel is FTX. The exchange halted withdrawals on Nov. 8, 2022, about a year after crypto's 2021 top, and total market value hit bottom two weeks later. Six months after the FTX freeze, crypto's value was up about 18% and bitcoin about 40%, according to Yahoo Finance calculations.

Big exchange blowups, from Mt. Gox to Bybit, have long set off talk that "this is the end of the industry," Owen Lau, managing director and senior analyst at Clear Street, told Yahoo Finance on Friday. Bitcoin has held up through them, he said, though "in the near term there will be volatility."

This bear market looks different in two ways.

It's been shallower. At its worst, on July 1, crypto's value was down 52%, compared with 73% in 2022 and 88% in 2018. And bitcoin may have already found its low. It rallied nearly 50% from its June 30 close to Sept. 21 before this pullback of about 10%.

The first few days after a blowup have been rough, though. After the Bybit and FTX shocks, bitcoin fell 14% to 19% the following week, then was higher three months later.

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Next comes the stolen crypto itself. About $3.3 billion of it can still move, mostly bitcoin and ether, according to Fundstrat. "If BTC and the broader complex absorb that supply without a material breakdown, I would view that as useful confirmation of demand around current prices," Sean Farrell, the firm's head of digital asset strategy, wrote in a note Thursday.