36 million euros in bitcoins disappeared from Binance’s hot wallet, the company says.

In all likelihood, hackers have gained access to account information of users of the trading exchange. Because this was done on a large scale, it was possible to send a large number of withdrawal requests. Binance did not detect these as rogue, so all these requests were granted. For example, a total of 7000 bitcoins were sent to the bitcoin addresses of the suspected hackers .

The missing bitcoins were in the company’s hot wallet . This is the wallet that is connected to the internet so that withdrawal requests can be processed quickly. Such a hot wallet is often supplemented from a cold wallet , which is not connected to the internet and is therefore not accessible externally. This ensures that these cold wallets are often more resistant to hacks.

Binance’s hot wallet contained about two percent of all bitcoins that the company stores for its users. Because this is a relatively low percentage of the whole, Binance is able to reimburse all lost bitcoins. They do this by calling the SAFU piggy bank.