Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the CEO of crypto exchange Binance, has shared a story of how executives of one of their clients were kidnapped and had to empty their crypto wallets.
CZ revealed that they had been able to track the transactions conducted and had managed to freeze almost 94% of the funds that were compromised.
The story
On Friday, the chief executive of Binance took to X to share a story of how his crypto exchange had managed to freeze the funds that were stolen.
He emphasized that it was not a fake story, but an actual incident and explained that a Binance client’s executives had been in Montenegro on a business trip when they were abducted.
The Binance CEO said that the kidnapping had resulted in losses of $12.5 million for the executives because they had had to empty their crypto wallets.
He further detailed that the crypto exchange examined the crypto transactions to track their on-chain activities and had contacted its partners to have them freeze the stolen funds.
He also revealed that the funds were sent to a Tron wallet and the crypto token used for making the transfer was the stablecoin USDT i.e. Tether.
CZ further stated that while they had been unsuccessful in freezing the entire stolen amount of $12.5 million, but had been able to freeze around 94.4% i.e. $11.8 million.
Comparison
After his post on the social media platform, CZ was questioned about fiat currencies and crypto. He was asked how the latter was better than the former kept in bands because your wallet can be frozen.
The CEO said that there was a balance and it was not possible to achieve the perfect balance. He elaborated by referring to Monero (XMR) about how no one can help when this crypto token is involved.
Likewise, he also detailed how it is possible to trace Bitcoin, but it is not possible to freeze it unless it is sent to a centralized exchange (CEX).
He emphasized that the whole point is that users have a choice and they are free to decide what they want.
The procedure
On Saturday, the Customer Support team of Binance also took to X to shed light on the standard procedure followed by the crypto exchange regarding stolen funds.
The post said that depending on the details shared with Binance about the incident, it might freeze the stolen funds.
However, a police report needs to be submitted to the crypto exchange within 7 days of contacting their Support.
If additional time is required for obtaining a police report, Binance is willing to extend the freeze period, but this varies from case to case.
Last week, a Web3 wallet was introduced by Binance to promote the concept of self-custody. The new wallet was described as a self-custody wallet that has been built into the Binance app.
The exchange further said that the private keys of the users are divided into three smaller parts called key-shares.
Two of these are within the users’ control and this is deliberate because the goal is to make it a self-custodial wallet.