On November 10, 2026, at 1:18 p.m. UTC+8, ChainCatcher reported that cybersecurity firm CertiK advised cryptocurrency exchanges to put hard dollar ceilings on hot-wallet holdings, rather than treating a cold-storage ratio as enough to judge security.
The note was tied to a period in which several exchanges had disclosed cold-wallet shares to reassure customers, after a Binance hot wallet suffered what the report called a record hack. Gate reported that 88.26% of its total assets were in cold storage. Coinbase said more than 99% of customer assets were kept offline. ChainCatcher relayed those figures as the exchanges’ own statements; the item does not describe an independent audit of them.
CertiK’s research team told Cointelegraph that cold storage is a useful measure of online exposure, but not a standalone security score. The report also listed jurisdictional floors for the share of customer crypto-asset value kept in cold storage: South Korea requires at least 80% for crypto service providers; Singapore guidance requires at least 90%; Japan’s framework requires at least 95%; and Hong Kong’s benchmark for licensed crypto trading platforms is 98%.
CertiK said higher cold-storage levels generally reduce what is exposed online, but the benefit diminishes at very high levels. It also said a rigid storage ratio can slow withdrawals, force rushed transfers, and concentrate risk in the key-management system.
The firm’s proposed control is a hot-wallet cap for each asset and each blockchain, set to the strictest of three limits: a percentage of customer liabilities; estimated withdrawal demand; and an absolute loss cap based on the exchange’s financial resources and its ability to recover. On those stated terms, the relevant trust boundary is the online balance that can be signed and the keys that move funds into it, not the published cold-storage percentage by itself. The report does not claim that meeting a cold-storage floor makes an exchange safe.
ChainCatcher also reported that, in the week before this November 10 item, Binance said it had replenished about 98% of the tokens affected by the hack and had absorbed the loss itself. The remaining tokens were described as less liquid and slower to obtain. Separately, Elliptic said hackers linked to North Korea laundered funds by issuing memecoins, moving about $430,000 through six newly issued tokens on NEAR. The item does not say that this NEAR amount was the Binance loss, and it does not describe a lock, burn, mint, message path, or verification step connecting a named origin chain to those six tokens.
Original article: ChainCatcher, November 10, 2026
