Arbitrum Security Council Moves $30M of Binance Hack Funds
The Arbitrum Security Council moved about $30 million of Binance hack funds on October 30, and the attacker did not sign anything. Per CoinDesk, the council shifted 8,425 ETH and 74 million ARB out of an address linked to the exploit.
What the Arbitrum Security Council did
The council has 12 members elected by ARB holders, and nine of them must agree on an emergency upgrade. CoinDesk says the council’s shared wallet sent one Ethereum transaction. It briefly swapped the code of Arbitrum’s Inbox contract, added a function that let it send transactions as if they came from the exploiter’s address, and then restored the original code in the same transaction.
Two such transactions moved the ETH and ARB to a holding address. The council’s notice says no other user’s funds or apps were affected. It also says the assets can only be moved again by an ArbitrumDAO governance vote. A separate report from Coin Alert News puts the freeze near $30.5 million, so the dollar figure varies slightly by source.
Why the Arbitrum Security Council move matters
It is small next to the hack. Binance puts its loss at about $6.3 billion, and the platform and partners had frozen around $3 billion of withdrawn funds by the morning of October 30. The FBI attributed the theft to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group on October 31, and Pyongyang denies it. Still, the Arbitrum step shows a chain’s emergency powers can pull coins out of a thief’s address without a key.
There is a catch. CoinDesk notes the council used the same power in April 2026, moving 30,766 ETH from the KelpDAO exploiter. Getting those funds back took weeks, and a federal judge had to modify a restraining notice after families with terrorism judgments against North Korea tried to claim the ETH. So a freeze is not the same as a return.
Earlier coverage: the North Korea denial and the Binance scam warning.
Miner math: what Binance fallout means for your margin
Here is the live maths on November 3. Bitcoin is $76,529 and the network is 1035 EH/s, so hashprice is about $33.49 per petahash per day. That is what one PH/s of hashing earns before power.
| Machine | 5c/kWh | 8c/kWh | 12c/kWh | Break-even |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Antminer S19 (95 TH/s, 3250 W) | -$0.72 | -$3.06 | -$6.18 | 4.1c |
| Antminer S19k Pro (115 TH/s, 2645 W) | $0.68 | -$1.23 | -$3.77 | 6.1c |
| Antminer S19 XP (141 TH/s, 3010 W) | $1.11 | -$1.06 | -$3.95 | 6.5c |
| Antminer S21 Pro (234 TH/s, 3510 W) | $3.63 | $1.10 | -$2.27 | 9.3c |
Numbers are profit per day after electricity, at the three power prices shown. Break-even is the most you can pay per kilowatt-hour before the machine loses money. Specs are the manufacturer ratings; network data comes from mempool.space. Try your own power price in our free bitcoin mining profit calculator. See what these machines really sold for in our used ASIC miner price index. Want to run the same numbers on a machine you can buy today? See our used ASIC miners, or buy several at once through bulk lots.
If more Binance fallout pushes bitcoin down 5%: the break-even power price on an S19k Pro falls from 6.1 to 5.8 cents per kilowatt-hour. At 8 cents, daily profit goes from -$1.23 to -$1.42.
The blunt answer for miners
This story does not change difficulty or the block reward. Bitcoin miners are not touched by an Arbitrum freeze. Hashrate sits near 1035 EH/s per mempool.space, and your margin still depends on price and your power rate. We read the council move as a reminder that a chain with a small council can act fast, which is good for victims and uncomfortable for people who value neutrality.
If the table above shows your S19 losing money at your power price, see our we buy used miners page or the mining economics guides.
-Nick
ING Mining
This is general information, not financial advice. Crypto is volatile, and exchanges can fail. Please do your own research.