Binance CFO Kaiser Ng Steps Down Days After Record $6.3 Billion Hack as Justin Yek Takes Over

Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, has announced that its chief financial officer, Kaiser Ng, is leaving the company just over a week after hackers stole a record $6.3 billion from the platform. Justin Yek, a longtime finance executive, will take over as the exchange’s new CFO.

The announcement came on Saturday, 7 November 2026, and it puts a fresh spotlight on the leadership of the world’s largest crypto exchange at a moment when it is still dealing with the fallout from the biggest theft in the history of cryptocurrency.

Binance says the change at the top of its finance team was planned long before the hack. But the timing has still raised questions, because the departure of a chief financial officer so soon after a record-breaking theft is the kind of event that makes customers, investors and regulators pay close attention.

Here is what happened, who the two men are, what the hack involved, and what it means for the millions of people who use Binance.

What Binance announced

Binance said on Saturday that Chief Financial Officer Kaiser Ng would leave the company and be succeeded by Justin Yek, Reuters reported.

“Kaiser Ng has decided to pursue a new venture after more than five years at Binance, with a transition plan implemented over the last half year,” Binance co-chief executive officer Yi He said in a statement. “We wish him the best in his next chapter.”

Justin Yek will become the firm’s new CFO, she said.

Yek said he was ready for the job. “I am thrilled to step into the role of CFO at Binance,” he said in the statement. “I look forward to leading our finance organisation as we continue to scale responsibly and deliver on our mission globally.”

The company did not give an exact date for when Ng will leave or when Yek will formally take charge. It also did not say what Ng’s new venture will be.

Binance has said the CFO transition had been planned before the hack, according to Bloomberg. That matters, because it means the company does not see the departure as a response to the theft. Even so, the announcement landed only nine days after the attack, and that timing is what most of the coverage has focused on.

Who is Kaiser Ng?

Kaiser Ng has been Binance’s chief financial officer since January 2022, according to his LinkedIn profile, cited by Bloomberg. That means he held the job for nearly five years, covering one of the most turbulent periods in the history of the crypto industry.

Before joining Binance, Ng spent about five years at Kraken, another large cryptocurrency exchange. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment through LinkedIn, Bloomberg reported.

Ng joined Binance at a difficult time. In his first year as CFO, the crypto market went through a deep crash, and several large crypto companies collapsed. Then, in November 2023, Binance itself pleaded guilty to US criminal charges and agreed to pay $4.3 billion to settle a long-running investigation.

As CFO, Ng was in charge of the company’s finances through all of that: the market crash, the guilty plea, the huge fine, and the rebuilding that followed. He was also the CFO when hackers struck on 29 October 2026 and took about $6.3 billion from the exchange’s wallets.

That is a heavy record for any finance chief. It is also why his departure, even if it was planned months ago, will be read by many as the end of an era at Binance.

Who is Justin Yek?

Justin Yek, the man taking over, is described by Binance as a longtime finance executive. He was most recently vice-president of finance at Airwallex, a payments company.

Airwallex is a financial technology firm that helps businesses move money across borders. Working there gave Yek experience in the kind of regulated payments business that Binance has been trying to build as it moves away from its early, loosely regulated days.

That background fits the job he is walking into. Binance’s CFO does not only manage the company’s money. The role also involves dealing with regulators in many countries, proving that customer funds are safe, and showing that the exchange can survive a crisis like the one it has just been through.

Yek’s own words suggest he knows what is expected. His promise to “scale responsibly” is the language of a company that wants to be seen as grown-up and trustworthy, not as the fast-moving startup it once was.

The $6.3 billion hack that came first

To understand why this CFO change matters, it helps to remember what happened just over a week earlier.

On Thursday, 29 October 2026, hackers drained about $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency from Binance’s hot wallets — the online wallets an exchange uses for day-to-day transactions. The theft hit wallets across 10 blockchain networks, and most of the money moved in roughly 20 minutes.

It is the largest cryptocurrency theft ever recorded. The previous record was the $1.5 billion stolen from the Bybit exchange in February 2025, which was also blamed on North Korean hackers.

The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said on 31 October that North Korea’s state-backed hacking unit, known as TraderTraitor, was responsible for the Binance attack. North Korea denied the accusation on 3 November.

Binance suspended withdrawals while it investigated, which meant millions of customers could not take their crypto out. Trading and deposits stayed open, but withdrawals were frozen. For an exchange with 335 million registered users and about $162.8 billion in assets under custody, according to its 2025 annual report, that was a serious shutdown.

Withdrawals reopened in phases from Sunday, 1 November, starting with 15 networks including bitcoin and ether. More networks were added from 3 November.

Binance has said it has now replenished about 98% of the stolen assets using its own money, and it has set aside around $6.34 billion of company funds to cover the loss. Customers will not bear the cost, it says. About $3 billion of the stolen assets has been located and frozen with the help of industry partners.

Customers pulled a net $3.64 billion — about 2.1% of the exchange’s assets — out in the first nine and a half hours after withdrawals reopened. Binance says the flow of money has since returned to normal.

Read our full report on the hack and the recovery.

Why the timing matters

A chief financial officer leaving is normal in any large company. People move on, and a transition planned over six months is a sign of orderly management, not panic.

But context matters. Ng is leaving days after the worst security failure in his company’s history, and days after the exchange had to spend more than $6 billion of its own money to make customers whole.

That raises natural questions. Did the hack speed up a departure that was already planned? Did the board want a fresh face in charge of finance after such a large loss? Or is this simply a coincidence of timing, with a planned handover happening to fall in a bad week?

Binance has not answered those questions directly. What it has said is that the transition was planned before the hack. That is the company’s position, and there is no public evidence to contradict it.

Still, the timing is awkward for another reason. The CFO is the person who has to explain to regulators, partners and customers how the company will pay for the damage and prevent it from happening again. Changing that person in the middle of the clean-up means the new CFO, Justin Yek, will have to take ownership of a crisis he did not manage.

For customers, the practical question is simpler: is my money safe? Binance says yes, and it says customers will not lose money from the hack. The exchange’s ability to cover a $6.3 billion loss from its own funds is, in itself, a sign of how large and profitable it has become. But it is also a reminder of how much risk sits inside even the biggest crypto platforms.

Binance’s troubled history with regulators

The CFO change is the latest chapter in a long story of leadership turnover at Binance, much of it driven by pressure from regulators.

Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ. Under Zhao, it grew into the world’s largest crypto exchange, but it also operated for years without a clear headquarters and with a light approach to the rules that govern traditional finance.

That caught up with the company in November 2023. On 21 November that year, Binance pleaded guilty to US criminal charges, including failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering programme, operating as an unlicensed money-transmitting business, and violating sanctions law. It agreed to pay $4.3 billion in penalties to the US Department of Justice and other agencies.

Zhao also pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering programme. He resigned as chief executive, agreed to pay a $50 million fine, and was later sentenced to four months in prison. He was released in September 2024, and President Donald Trump pardoned him in October 2025.

Richard Teng, a former financial regulator from Singapore, took over as chief executive on the day Zhao stepped down. Teng has since tried to turn Binance into a more conventional, regulated company. Yi He, a co-founder of Binance, now serves as co-CEO alongside Teng.

The CFO change fits that pattern. Each time Binance has faced a crisis, it has responded by bringing in people with experience in regulated finance. Yek’s background at a payments company is exactly that kind of hire.

A wider problem for the crypto industry

Binance is not the only exchange that has been hit. Crypto exchanges Bitget, Bybit and other platforms have also suffered major hacks, The Edge reported. The Bybit theft of $1.5 billion in February 2025 was the previous record, and it was also blamed on North Korean hackers.

The industry is moving into the mainstream at a time when cyberattacks are becoming more advanced. The rise of artificial intelligence is giving attackers new tools, and the huge sums of money held by crypto exchanges make them an obvious target.

For ordinary users, the lesson is the same one that comes up after every big exchange hack: money held on an exchange is only as safe as the exchange’s security. Binance says it has covered this loss, and its size means it can afford to. Smaller exchanges might not be so lucky.

The wider crypto market has also been under pressure. Bitcoin fell below $76,000 on 6 November as a sell-off in technology stocks spread to crypto markets. That came just a week after the Binance hack, adding to a difficult period for digital assets.

Read our report on the Bitcoin slide.

What happens next

The most important thing to watch now is how Justin Yek handles his first weeks in the job. He will need to show regulators and customers that Binance’s finances are sound after the $6.3 billion loss, and that the exchange has fixed the security weakness that allowed the hack.

Binance published a security report on 3 November which said the attackers spent months preparing. According to that report, a DevOps engineer on the exchange’s wallet infrastructure team downloaded a tampered developer tool in June 2026, which gave the attackers a way in. That kind of slow, patient attack is hard to defend against, and it will be Yek’s job, alongside the security team, to show that the gaps have been closed.

There are also open questions about the stolen money. About $3 billion has been located and frozen, but that still leaves billions unaccounted for. The FBI has blamed North Korea, and recovering funds from a state-backed hacking operation is extremely difficult.

For Ng, the next step is a new venture that he has not yet described. For Binance, the next step is proving that a change of CFO in the middle of a crisis is a sign of strength, not a sign of trouble.

Frequently asked questions

Who is leaving Binance?

Chief Financial Officer Kaiser Ng is leaving the company after more than five years. He has been CFO since January 2022.

Who is replacing him?

Justin Yek, a longtime finance executive who was most recently vice-president of finance at payments company Airwallex.

When was the change announced?

Binance announced it on Saturday, 7 November 2026.

Was the departure caused by the $6.3 billion hack?

Binance says no. The company says the CFO transition had been planned over the previous six months, before the hack took place on 29 October 2026.

How big was the Binance hack?

Hackers stole about $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency on 29 October 2026. It is the largest crypto theft ever recorded. The FBI has blamed North Korea’s TraderTraitor hacking unit. North Korea has denied it.

Will Binance customers lose money?

Binance says no. It says it has replenished about 98% of the stolen assets with its own money and set aside around $6.34 billion to cover the loss.

Who runs Binance now?

Richard Teng is chief executive, and co-founder Yi He serves as co-CEO alongside him. Justin Yek is the new chief financial officer.

Conclusion

The departure of Kaiser Ng as Binance’s chief financial officer would be a notable event on its own. Coming just over a week after the largest cryptocurrency theft in history, it is much more than that.

Binance insists the timing is a coincidence and that the handover was planned months ago. That may well be true. But the new CFO, Justin Yek, starts his job with a difficult task: rebuilding trust after a $6.3 billion hack, proving the exchange’s finances are sound, and showing regulators that Binance has learned from what went wrong.

For the millions of people who use Binance, the change at the top matters less than the answers to two simple questions: is my money safe, and will this happen again? The exchange says it has covered the loss and fixed the problem. The coming weeks will show whether customers and regulators believe it.

Sources

• Reuters: https://www.reuters.com/business/finance/binance-cfo-kaiser-ng-steps-down-justin-yek-named-new-finance-chief-2026-11-07/
• Bloomberg via Moneycontrol: https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/business/binance-cfo-kaiser-ng-exits-days-after-6-bn-crypto-theft-justin-yek-to-take-over-14074634.html/amp
• The Edge Singapore (Bloomberg): http://www.theedgesingapore.com/news/cryptocurrency/binances-cfo-leaves-company-wake-us6-bil-crypto-heist
• Channel News Asia: https://www.channelnewsasia.com/singapore/richard-teng-former-monetary-authority-singapore-exchange-binance-ceo-zhao-changpeng-3938346?ref=exchangeinvest.com

This article is for general information and education only. It is not legal or financial advice.