Elon Musk responded to a post mocking Binance's promise to cover hack losses, and Changpeng “CZ” Zhao wasn't amused. The Binance founder told him to stop trolling and reminded him that the exchange had helped fund his Twitter takeover.

The argument grew out of an earlier reassurance from Zhao that Binance would cover the damage. A user replying to him posted an image of Sam Bankman-Fried's old claim that FTX had enough to cover all client holdings.

Musk's contribution was a single grimacing-face emoji: 😬. He offered no explanation or detailed claim about Binance's finances in that reply.

Zhao took it as a badly timed jab. In his response on October 30, he wrote:

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

He then brought their financial ties into the conversation:

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

The post ended with a request for Musk to show some support. Zhao has said he no longer manages Binance, describing himself as a shareholder.

Why SpaceX shares entered the argument

Zhao linked the holding to Binance's $500 million backing of Musk's Twitter acquisition. He described the current SPCX shares as worth more than $1 billion, but did not announce a sale or provide a transaction plan in the post.

Co-founder Yi He then joined the same conversation. Her reply was addressed to Zhao, Musk and the user who had posted the FTX image:

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.

That was an assertion about the company's ability to absorb the damage, without a detailed cash breakdown. Annual revenue, the value of a stockholding and cash available for reimbursements are different measures.

In a follow-up, Zhao said he had been showing funds Musk might recognize so that he could be less worried. The conversation did not set out a new financing agreement between the two men.

The hack behind the jokes

As previously reported by Apex in its ongoing LIVE coverage, Binance estimates the incident's total impact at about $6.3 billion and has promised to cover all losses using its SAFU fund and company funds. Roughly $3 billion in affected assets has been frozen.

A new investigation update on October 30 said additional points of breach had been found beyond the initially suspected compromised laptop. The exchange said the outflows stopped when withdrawals were paused and that it was still gathering facts with law enforcement.

Deposits remain available. The company said it was on track to resume withdrawals in about 45 hours, a projected timeline rather than a confirmed reopening. Those operational restrictions form the backdrop to Zhao's demand for support.

The FTX reference also carries a specific history. Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison in March 2024 after a fraud conviction, according to the U.S. Justice Department. The image in the thread invoked his earlier assurance to customers; Musk's emoji did not explain whether he intended any specific comparison beyond reacting to it.

TRM Labs and Chainalysis have separately attributed the theft to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group with high confidence, as Apex has reported. Those are private-sector assessments; the exchange’s own update did not identify the attackers.

Musk has separately commented on the security risks raised by the incident. In another October 30 reply, he predicted that superintelligent AI agents would eventually carry out such thefts to obtain currency for themselves. That was a prediction about future AI behavior, not evidence identifying the attacker behind this hack.