Billionaire Changpeng Zhao tells Musk to stop mocking hack

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has asked Elon Musk to stop making fun of the $6.3 billion theft from the cryptocurrency exchange, reminding the world’s richest person that Binance helped pay for his purchase of Twitter and now owns SpaceX shares worth more than $1 billion.

“Elon, have a lot of respect for you, but bad time to troll. Please stop,” Zhao, known as CZ, wrote on X on Friday. “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!”

Musk had responded to news of the attack by posting “Everyday is Zeroday,” a reference to software flaws that hackers exploit before they can be fixed. He also replied with fire and laughing emojis to a post in which Zhao had warned his followers, a day before the hack, not to open suspicious email links or attachments.

The biggest crypto theft on record

Hackers drained wallets belonging to Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, on Thursday. Binance put the total affected at about $6.3 billion, more than four times the $1.5 billion stolen from Bybit in February 2025, which had been the largest crypto theft until now.

Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs attributed the attack with high confidence to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking group that the FBI has linked to the Bybit theft. TRM said about $6.36 billion was taken from Binance wallets across 10 blockchains, most of it within about 20 minutes, and that the attacker had prepared for at least 36 hours using funds withdrawn from the Tornado Cash mixing service. The haul included about 167,464 ether and 1.6 billion Tether stablecoins drained from a single Binance hot wallet on Ethereum.

About $3 billion of the stolen assets has been frozen with the help of law enforcement and the stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle, Binance said. The exchange has pledged to cover all customer losses using its Secure Asset Fund for Users, an emergency reserve, and its own money. It paused withdrawals after the attack and said they were expected to resume within 48 hours.

Zhao offered his own rough tally. With more than $6 billion taken, about $3 billion frozen and over $1 billion available in the reserve fund, he put the remaining gap at about $2 billion, which he described as painful but manageable. He cautioned that the figures were not final. “Loss might be a bit higher than that, but will cover,” he wrote.

SpaceX shares not for sale

Binance invested $500 million in Musk’s $44 billion acquisition of Twitter in 2022. Musk later merged the platform, renamed X, into his artificial intelligence company xAI, which was folded into SpaceX earlier this year ahead of the rocket maker’s stock market listing in June. Binance’s stake in X became a holding in SpaceX, whose shares have traded above their $135 listing price.

Zhao said he had no plans to sell the shares and had mentioned them to show that Binance has resources to draw on. Yi He, a Binance co-founder and its co-chief executive officer, said the same. “Our company’s revenue for the year is sufficient to cover the losses, so we do not yet need to sell,” she said.

Zhao, who was born in China and holds Canadian citizenship, founded Binance in 2017 and remains its largest shareholder. He stepped down as chief executive in 2023 after pleading guilty in the US to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program, and served four months in prison in 2024. President Donald Trump pardoned him in October 2025.