Binance Suffers Biggest Heist in Crypto History

Plus: Stocks Tumble on AI Spending Fears

Author

Matt Davis
November 02, 2026

In partnership with

Stephen R. Balzac won last week’s world-famous-news-haiku-competition™ with this beauty about how iPhone Duos are cracking down the seam:

Most expensive phone
Duo much like a plumber
Crack in the middle

~Stephen R. Balzac (133)

Congrats, Stephen. And here’s how the competition fared:

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Not worth what you paid? iPhone Duo fits the mold. It’s the Apple way! ~Margaret Lea (40)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Most expensive phone | Duo much like a plumber | Crack in the middle ~Stephen R. Balzac (133)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Analog trending | Reading long books at Harvard | And screenless iPhones ~Tim Olsen (17)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Fold it, don't break it | Makers think it's that easy | Phone tells dif'frent tale ~Janine G (22)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ A new folding phone? Not what its cracked up to be | Still have my flip phone ~Steve (102)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Fold for me my phone. So cool. Retro type call back. Oh my. The middle. Crack. ~Amanda (14)
328 Votes via @beehiiv polls

This week’s world-famous-news-haiku-competition™ is about how crypto exchange Binance is scrambling to recover from the biggest heist in crypto history. Send me your entry — to haiku at cheddar dot com — by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

Binance Suffers Biggest Heist in Crypto History

When hackers linked to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group broke into a Binance $BNB ( ▼ 1.36% ) engineer’s laptop and made off with $6.3 billion, crypto’s largest exchange faced a breach that blew straight past its emergency reserves. While stablecoin issuers managed to freeze $3 billion, Binance had to perform serious financial acrobatics to plug the remaining hole.

Enter the corporate damage-control machine. Co-Chief Executive Richard Teng promised that “Binance will cover all losses,” while an official spokesman declared, “We will weather this storm.”

To back that up, Binance is fronting company cash and repurchasing $1.3 billion in crypto from open markets, with founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) brushing off the deficit as “(still painful, but) manageable.”

Naturally, no multi-billion-dollar crypto heist is complete without social media drama. Elon Musk posted a grimacing-face emoji referencing Sam Bankman-Fried, and CZ clapped back, “Elon, have a lot of respect for you, but bad time to troll. Please stop.” CZ’s co-CEO Yi He quickly chimed in on X to clarify that Binance’s revenue was plenty to cover the hit, adding, “We do not yet need to sell the SpaceX $SPCX ( ▼ 6.37% )  shares you are bullish on.”

Outside analysts were less entertained by the high-stakes soap opera. Moody’s Ratings Vice President Cristiano Ventricelli noted to the Wall Street Journal that the breach “illustrates the risk concentration inherent in large, centralized intermediaries.”

Quote of the Day

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Bonuses are being determined…. If [a hedge fund] takes a stupid drawdown late in the year, in a market like this, you blow yourself up. You’re incentivized to take risk off the table.

How a Bankruptcy Law Firm Bankrupted Itself

If you want something done right, do it yourself — even if "it" is dismantling a 95-year-old law firm pulling in $2 billion in revenue. That’s what Weil, Gotshal & Manges — the legal titan that famously guided Enron and Lehman Brothers through mega-bankruptcies — has just done. It turned its restructuring expertise on itself after five whirlwind days of chaos.

The trouble had been brewing beneath the surface, but the final unraveling was swift. Incoming firm chair Ramona Nee had presciently noted on a podcast that leaders must “constantly be looking around corners and constantly making sure that we’re taking care of our people in a way that makes them want to stay.” Unfortunately, those corners were packed with headhunters. When star dealmaker Michael Aiello bolted for Cravath and a last-minute merger with Willkie collapsed, partners scrambled for the exits in droves.

By Wednesday, firm leader Barry Wolf had to break the news to 1,200 attorneys via a video call, confessing, “Given the significant partner departures, resulting loss of revenue and other disruptions... we have reached the heartbreaking conclusion that we must recommend an orderly dissolution.” Wolf added, “This is not a recommendation we ever imagined making.”

As one retired partner of three decades marveled, “It’s almost impossible to believe…. But the run on the bank came, and the bank has to close.”

Rather than filing for bankruptcy, Weil is quietly winding down while lawyers pour Champagne into paper cups at Midtown rooftop bars. When a titan built on corporate duress fails to look around the corner, even a century of prestige can't stop a good old-fashioned law-firm bank run.

Stocks Tumble on AI Spending Fears

You can only burn billions on AI server farms for so long before Wall Street starts asking to see the receipts. Big Tech’s high-stakes AI romance took a sudden turn into a messy breakup late last week, sending major indices into a tailspin as earnings exposed an uncomfortable truth: tech giants are burning cash. Intel $INTC ( ▼ 28.58% ) sank 29% in its worst market session since 1974, while Alphabet $GOOGL ( ▼ 1.4% ) wiped out an eye-watering $500 billion in value in a single day.

Analyst commentary quickly shifted from cheerleading to damage control. Hank Calenti at SMBC told the Financial Times that “expectations built into [tech share] prices are being challenged and are now resetting,” pointing out that firms are “spending more on capex than forecast” while earning less. Barclays $BCS ( ▼ 3.55% ) strategist Emmanuel Cau added that “the combination of deteriorating cash flows and rising capital commitments means the debate over whether AI returns can ultimately justify the scale of investment may not be resolved any time soon.”

Translation: Everyone bought the world's most expensive hardware, but nobody knows when the profit model actually arrives. Across the Pacific, the panic was just as blunt. With SoftBank $SFTBY ( ▼ 7.5% ) dropping 48% from its peak, Astris Advisory strategist Neil Newman declared that “the major tech names are entering a no man’s land where they become uninvestable.” As for why hedge funds are fleeing en masse, Nomura’s Charlie McElligott offered some peak Wall Street realism: “Bonuses are being determined.… If [a hedge fund] takes a stupid drawdown late in the year, in a market like this, you blow yourself up. You’re incentivized to take risk off the table.”

Song of the Day: Jonah Kagen, ‘Ain’t Convinced’

"Ain't Convinced" is the creative centerpiece and boldest sonic departure on Jonah Kagen's newly released sophomore album, Eternity of Anything. It contrasts Kagen's traditional acoustic vulnerability with experimental electronic textures.

Court Reinstates NFL 'Sunday Ticket' Verdict

If there’s one thing NFL fans and sports executives can agree on, it’s that watching out-of-market games has long felt like an expensive ordeal. But the National Football League’s legal defense team just suffered a major sack courtesy of the San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

The federal appellate court officially reinstated a jury verdict in a massive antitrust lawsuit claiming the NFL overcharged subscribers to its Sunday Ticket game telecasts for more than a decade. In doing so, the appellate court overturned a California lower court judge who had previously thrown out the staggering $4.7 billion verdict awarded by a jury in 2024.

While the appellate court didn't hand fans a $4.7 billion payout immediately, ruling that the league is entitled to a new trial specifically on damages, the liability decision puts the league back on defense. For over 10 years, Sunday Ticket subscribers paid top dollar just to stream their out-of-market games. The 9th Circuit’s revival of the verdict pushes the NFL right back into the legal, er… red zone.

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Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

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Definitely not.

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