Binance says 98% of the stolen assets are replaced and widens its reserve proof to 44 tokens, as Coinbase tells customers more than 99% of their assets sit offline

Binance said on Wednesday that it has replaced about 98% of the assets affected by the October 29 theft and is buying the remaining 2% through market and over-the-counter channels, The Block reports. Those last purchases are slower because the tokens are less liquid.

The exchange also took a new proof-of-reserves snapshot covering 44 tokens, up from 10 in its previous one. The zero-knowledge proof for the new snapshot is expected to take 50 to 60 hours to generate. FinanceFeeds notes that such a proof shows assets existed at a point in time, not that systems cannot be breached later.

Coinbase used the moment to spell out its own defenses. In a blog post on Wednesday it said it was not affected by the Binance incident, that more than 99% of customer assets sit offline in cold storage, and that customer assets are held 1:1 and not lent out without customer authorization. It listed private keys split into pieces that are not fully reassembled during signing, withdrawal limits, anomaly detection and kill switches, and said no single employee has standing access that could move funds alone, according to FinanceFeeds.

Coinbase added that advances in artificial intelligence are rapidly changing the security landscape. Binance said on Tuesday that the theft, of about $6.34 billion, began with a fake job interview.