How to protect yourself, and what the law offers
I REFER to the article “Binance estimates US$6.3 billion hacked in crypto’s biggest heist”, published in The Business Times on Oct 30, 2026.
The record hack is a timely reminder for Singapore investors that no platform is too big to be hacked, and that their legal protection depends largely on where they hold their crypto.
Binance, which is not licensed here, has promised to cover all losses. But a promise is not a guarantee, and smaller platforms may be unable to pay.
Any claim against Binance would also be pursued abroad: its terms are governed by Abu Dhabi Global Market law, with disputes arbitrated there.
If a platform fails, investors’ recovery turns largely on whether their crypto is held on trust.
In Quoine v B2C2 (2020), an exchange reversed a customer’s trades after a glitch. Our Court of Appeal found this breached the contract, but rejected the customer’s claim that its Bitcoin was held on trust as nothing showed an intention to create one, and keeping customers’ assets apart from the exchange’s own is not, by itself, enough.
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Without a trust, customers have only a contractual claim and, if a platform collapses, generally rank as unsecured creditors. After the 2024 hack of crypto exchange WazirX, users recovered about 85.5 per cent under a Singapore court-approved scheme.
Our courts can also help recover stolen crypto. In ByBit v Ho Kai Xin (2023), an employee handling ByBit’s payroll diverted about 4.2 million USDT, a US dollar-linked token, to herself.
The High Court held that crypto is property in law, so the USDT still belonged to ByBit, which could trace and reclaim it rather than merely sue for compensation.
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Courts have also frozen stolen crypto worldwide even when the thieves were unknown (CLM v CLN, 2022). But court orders bind only those who respect them.
If North Korean hackers are responsible for the Binance hack, as reported, recovery will rely on token issuers, such as Tether and Circle, which froze over US$2.3 billion of their tokens within hours of the attack, and on police cooperation.
To protect themselves from losses arising from hacks, customers should check whether a platform is licensed, whether their assets are held on trust, and where disputes are heard.
Keep on exchanges only what one trades, spread holdings across platforms and, as the police and Cyber Security Agency of Singapore advise, keep long-term holdings in an offline hardware wallet.
Protect one’s e-mail (which criminals can hijack to reset crypto passwords) with a unique password and an authenticator app, not SMS codes.
Companies should take note too. Binance’s findings are sobering: After a fake job interview compromised one engineer’s computer, attackers abused an internal artificial tool to hijack colleagues’ access.
No single person or device should be able to move large sums, and directors must act with reasonable diligence under the Companies Act. Concentrating company funds on one exchange, however large, may now be hard to defend.
Size and licences reduce some risks but concentrate others; better habits limit the damage.
Ch’ng Li-Ling Deputy head of digital assets and technology RHTLaw Asia
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