Political Figures Seize on Massive Crypto Heist as Election Looms
The recent $6.3 billion hack of Binance, the largest in cryptocurrency history, has become a focal point for political figures as the U.S. election approaches, with early voting already underway in many areas.
President Donald Trump addressed the hack at a press conference on Friday, stating, “We don’t know. We’re looking at that, the hack with Binance. They’re saying they’re going to get it back, they’re saying they’re guaranteeing it.”
Binance, the crypto exchange targeted in the breach, announced late Friday via X that it would absorb all financial losses. “We want to be clear about our commitment: Binance will absorb the financial impact of these stolen funds, not our users,” the company stated. It also reported that approximately $3 billion of the stolen funds had been frozen across various jurisdictions.
While the immediate political mileage from the hack, widely attributed to a North Korean group, remained unclear, both Republican and Democratic parties quickly began to articulate their stances.
Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis, a Republican and a vocal proponent of cryptocurrency, used the incident to highlight the stalled Clarity Act in an X post on Friday. “Yesterday, hackers stole more than $6 billion from Binance in less than 4 hours, the biggest heist in history. The Clarity Act would have given crypto firms legal cover to freeze suspicious transactions the instant law enforcement calls. Every minute lost is money gone for good,” she wrote.
The Senate failed to pass a cloture motion on the Clarity Act on September 15. This legislation aimed to establish the nation’s first regulatory framework for digital assets. The bill had encountered obstacles due to proposed ethics provisions that would prohibit government officials and their families from issuing or profiting from digital assets while in office.
Subsequently, on September 18, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) submitted a regulatory proposal concerning crypto asset transactions and markets for White House review, signaling its continued efforts to oversee the digital asset sector.
CFTC Chair Michael Selig commented on the Binance hack on Friday, stating during a television appearance, “This proves our exact point in proposing regulations for crypto markets. … The real issue here is that these are unregulated offshore exchanges and they don’t have the same sorts of safeguards that we have in our financial markets here in the United States.”
Meanwhile, Democratic Representative Maxine Waters issued a statement on Friday, asserting, “The reported $6.3 billion hack of Binance should be a wake-up call to anyone who thinks the cryptocurrency industry can operate without strong accountability. Yet, Trump and Congressional Republicans have been set on pushing a deregulatory agenda that weakens compliance mandates and oversight of the crypto industry, not to mention the Trump family’s own questionable ties to the company.”
Waters also alluded to past interactions between Binance and the Trump family, recalling, “Remember that after Binance’s owner, Changpeng Zhao (CZ), gave over $2 billion to the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial, Trump’s Securities and Exchange Commission’s Chair Paul Atkins dropped the SEC’s slam-dunk fraud case against Binance and CZ, and Trump fully pardoned CZ, allowing him to again get involved with crypto.”
Binance confirmed it is collaborating with law enforcement agencies, blockchain intelligence firms, token issuers, and other exchanges to track and recover the stolen funds. The company has also pledged to release a postmortem incident report following a comprehensive security review.
“We will provide a detailed technical report outlining what happened, the lessons learned and the additional safeguards being implemented,” Binance stated.
