Ethereum Crash: The Binance Hacker Sits on 195,000 ETH. Is a Sell-Off Coming?

Ethereum is under double pressure after the suspected Binance hack. On Thursday night Ether fell from $2,313 to $2,251, down 2.6% within an hour. The bigger risk is still ahead: according to Etherscan about 195,460 ETH sit on an attacker address, worth more than $440 million at 21:25 UTC. Tether and Circle have frozen most of the stolen stablecoins, but Ether cannot be frozen. If the attacker sells, the price takes the hit directly. We calculate how large that pressure really is, which levels matter now and why Ethereum itself was not hacked.

The full timeline of the evening is in our crypto crash timeline, the wallet details in our Binance hack report.

Ethereum crash: what happened to the ETH price tonight

Prices from CoinGecko in five-minute steps. Over 24 hours Ether was down 3.6% at 21:23 UTC according to CoinMarketCap, 4.7% over seven days, weaker than Bitcoin at 2.6%.

The hacker sits on 195,000 ETH: how big is the selling pressure?

More than $440 million sounds like a lot. Relative to the market it is less than the first shock suggests: CoinMarketCap showed about $15 billion in Ether traded in the 24 hours to 21:23 UTC. The loot equals just under 3% of one day's volume. Selling it all at once would still move the price noticeably, because it would hit order books thinned out by the evening's liquidation wave.

As of 22:13 UTC: the 195,460 ETH are still untouched on 0x8532…43D4, Blockscout data show. The first attacker address is moving, though: since 21:22 UTC it has been sending out tokens Tether and Circle cannot freeze, including 29,934 WBETH, 7.0 million UNI and 217.5 million ENA, and funding fresh addresses with 0.5 to 1 ETH each for gas. That is how laundering usually begins.

1/4 EIP-7702 can turn the wallet itself into the sweeper. A Binance-labeled wallet moved 167,464 ETH + 63 tokens, including 1.615B USDT, just 3m24s after a signed delegation was installed. This is bad.

odysseas.eth (@odysseas_eth) October 29, 2026

Professional attackers therefore rarely sell in one go. After the Bybit hack in February 2025 the stolen Ether was swapped in tranches over days and bridged to other blockchains. For Ethereum this means the pressure is more likely to come as steady rain than as a cloudburst, and every move of the attacker address will make headlines in the coming days. The address was funded with 0.1 ETH from the mixer Tornado Cash, a pattern investigators know from groups that launder loot through mixers and decentralized exchanges rather than selling on a centralized exchange with identity checks.

Was Ethereum hacked?

No. The blockchain worked exactly as designed. The attacker used EIP-7702, a feature live since the Pectra upgrade in May 2025 that lets a wallet hand its control to a smart contract. That requires a signature with the key of that very wallet. Whoever holds it controls the wallet, with or without EIP-7702. The weakness lies in key handling, not in the protocol. For Ethereum as a technology tonight changes nothing. For the price it does, because traders do not separate the two in the short term.

More on the Binance hack

• Binance hack: how the hot wallet was drained
• Live ticker and timeline: the crypto crash after the hack
• USDT frozen: what Tether and Circle really blocked
• Binance withdrawals: which networks are paused
• Is this the end? Three scenarios for Bitcoin
• Solana below $100: is $80 next?
• BNB crash: another FTT moment?
• The biggest crypto hacks in history
• How to short Bitcoin in the crash
• Why is crypto down today?

How low can the Ethereum price go?

No one can seriously predict that. The levels where buyers stepped in over recent months come from the price history on CoinGecko:

The $2,000 mark matters psychologically. Where analysts see Ether by year-end is collected in our Ethereum price prediction.

What ETH holders can do now

• Watch the attacker address. Moves of the 195,460 ETH can be followed on Etherscan. Large transfers to decentralized exchanges are the signal the market will react to.
• Self-custody. If you hold Ether on Binance, you can withdraw it to your own wallet. Our hardware wallet comparison shows suitable devices.
• No signature without checking. Tonight shows how much power a single signature has. Do not confirm anything in your wallet that you did not trigger yourself.
• Hedge instead of guessing. If you want protection against further falls, our guide how to short Bitcoin explains the options and their risks.

This article is not investment advice. Crypto assets are highly volatile and you can lose your entire investment.