CZ tells Musk 'bad time to troll' amid $6.3 billion Binance hack

Elon Musk’s keyboard warrior persona has drawn a public response from Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ), who called out unhelpful comments from the Tesla founder and X owner as crypto’s largest exchange deals with the industry’s largest security breach. 

CZ’s response came within hours of Binance’s $6.3 billion hack, with the exchange’s former CEO reminding Musk of an earlier $500 million Binance cash injection into the 2022 deal to buy Twitter. 

Elon, have a lot of respect for you, but bad time to troll. Please stop.

Our SPCX shares (from our $500m investment in your Twitter takeover) are worth more than a billion.

Would appreciate if you show a little support. Thanks!

— CZ 🔶 BNB (@cz_binance) October 30, 2026

That stake has since doubled and is now worth over $1 billion.

CZ responds to Musk’s public trolling

CZ asked Elon to “Please stop” and “show a little support” earlier today, after multiple posts from the billionaire appeared to be poking fun at Binance’s situation as the exchange deals with the fallout of its $6.3 billion hack. 

Even in his response, CZ noted that he holds Musk in high regard, writing: “Elon, I have a lot of respect for you, but bad time to troll.” 

CZ reminded Musk of past business dealings with Binance, when the exchange committed about $500 million to Musk’s 2022 bid to acquire Twitter for $44 billion. 

The request was in response to a loaded post from Musk, who shared a grimacing emoji to a thread about the Binance hack. 

CZ responded to another attempt by Musk to draw humor from an earlier post where Zhao was sharing cybersecurity advice, writing that the breach “is more complex than that, but all hacks generally have a compromised device (or algorithm) at some point.”

CZ’s mention of Binance’s shareholdings drew a reply from co-founder Yi He, who played along in public. “Reporting to the major shareholder: Our company’s revenue for the year is sufficient to cover the losses, so we do not yet need to sell the SpaceX shares you are bullish on,” she wrote, tagging CZ and Musk.

@cz_binance @elonmusk @HuaweiMate6 Reporting to the major shareholder: Our company’s revenue for the year is sufficient to cover the losses, so we do not yet need to sell the SpaceX shares you are bullish on.💁‍♀️

— Yi He (@heyibinance) October 30, 2026

CZ clarified that he was not floating a sale. He said he was only pointing to funds Musk “might know” about so that the Tesla and SpaceX chief would “be less worried.”

Both men have engaged in terse interactions publicly before. During a 2021 episode, Musk called out stalled Dogecoin withdrawals on Binance as “shady.” CZ fired back by linking to a Tesla vehicle recall.

In December 2024, Musk replied with a short “Thanks!” when CZ brought up the $500 million contribution to his 2022 Twitter acquisition, as Cryptopolitan reported at the time.

What Binance says went wrong

The exchange estimates the security incident, which began Thursday, cost around $6.3 billion, making it the largest hack in crypto history. Binance first blamed a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, which it said may have let an attacker reach a service container and push through unauthorized withdrawals.

That account has since widened. In its latest update, Binance said its investigation “uncovered additional points of breach.” 

CEO Richard Teng wrote on Friday that the attacker “did not simply use one engineer’s permissions, and this was not a single ‘one-click’ action,” describing a more involved attack process. The firm said it has found no evidence of a wallet private key leak and has not pinned responsibility on any individual.

Binance has frozen about $3 billion of the stolen funds on-chain. It says it will absorb every loss through its SAFU emergency fund and company reserves. Deposits have reopened, withdrawals remain paused, and the exchange says it is on track to turn them back on in 45 hours.