Binance has named Justin Yek as its new chief financial officer, replacing Kaiser Ng just nine days after hackers stole about $6.3 billion from the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in the biggest digital-asset theft on record.
The exchange announced the leadership change on Saturday, 7 November, with co-chief executive Yi He saying Ng had decided to leave to pursue a new venture after more than five years at Binance. Binance stressed that the handover had been planned for six months and was unrelated to the 29 October breach.
Who is Justin Yek?
Binance CFO Justin Yek is a longtime finance executive who most recently served as vice-president of finance at Airwallex, the global payments and financial technology company. Before joining Airwallex, where he initially led strategic finance and corporate development, he worked as a technology investment banker at Morgan Stanley and Citi.
“I am thrilled to step into the role of CFO at Binance,” Yek said after the appointment was announced. Binance has not said exactly when he will formally take up the role. Justin Yek’s Airwallex background gives him experience of both traditional payments and fast-growing fintech.
Why Kaiser Ng is leaving
Ng has been Binance’s chief financial officer since January 2022, having previously held a finance leadership role at rival exchange Kraken. He stayed through a turbulent period that included a $4.3 billion settlement with United States authorities in 2023 and the departure of founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao as chief executive.
“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,” Yi He said in the statement announcing the change.
A day after the announcement, Ng revealed more about his next step in a post on X on Sunday, 8 November, saying he planned to found a company that would put real-world assets — from sports and entertainment properties to GPUs and gold — on blockchains. Zhao responded to the post and floated possible backing from his family office, YZi Labs, suggesting Ng’s departure is amicable. Kaiser Ng’s Binance exit therefore looks like a planned handover rather than a sacking.
A transition planned before the hack
Binance has been at pains to present the change as routine succession rather than a response to the crisis. According to the company, preparations for Ng’s departure had been under way for six months, placing the decision well before the security breach on 29 October. The exchange has said explicitly that there is no connection between the two events.
The company has not disclosed the precise date Ng’s departure takes effect, and at the time of the announcement it did not identify his next venture. That detail only emerged in Ng’s own social media post the following day.
The Binance CFO change in November 2026 comes at a delicate moment, and the careful framing matters: a chief financial officer leaving days after a record theft invites obvious questions.
What Yek inherits: the $6.3 billion hack recovery
New Binance CFO Justin Yek takes charge of the exchange’s finances while it is still working through the aftermath of the $6.3 billion hack, a recovery effort that will define his first months in the job. Attackers drained about $6.34 billion in digital assets from its hot wallets on 29 October, and Binance’s own report, published on 3 November, traced the intrusion back to June: a poisoned coding tool, a fake job interview and a compromised internal artificial intelligence tool gave the attackers a foothold inside the company’s wallet-signing service over five months.
The FBI attributed the theft on 31 October to TraderTraitor, a hacking operation it links to North Korea’s Lazarus Group, and published hundreds of wallet addresses it says are connected to the attackers. North Korea has denied any role, with Kim Yo Jong, the sister of leader Kim Jong Un, calling the FBI’s finding a political provocation. Blockchain analytics firms Chainalysis and Elliptic say the on-chain evidence supports the FBI’s attribution.
About $2.85 billion of the stolen funds has been frozen or intercepted, and Binance says it has replenished about 98 per cent of the affected assets from its own funds. Withdrawals reopened in stages from 1 November, although customers have since withdrawn $4.7 billion from the exchange. Investigators have traced the remaining funds through about 12,000 wallets across 11 blockchains, and Binance says it stopped 57 suspected North Korean attack attempts during 2026.
For Binance CFO Justin Yek, the immediate task is financial rather than technical: accounting for the losses, managing the recovery of frozen funds and making sure the exchange can keep meeting withdrawal requests while the laundering chase continues.
What it means for Binance users in Pakistan
For ordinary users, the change of chief financial officer should mean little day to day. Trading and withdrawals continue as normal, and Binance has said repeatedly that customer funds are safe. The bigger test for Yek will be restoring confidence among users who watched the world’s largest exchange lose billions in a single afternoon.
Pakistan is one of Binance’s most important growth markets. The exchange says 54 per cent of its users in the country are aged between 18 and 29, and its Qafila 2026 campaign has targeted exactly that young audience with $1 million in rewards. Zhao has also said Pakistan can become a major crypto hub by 2030.
For those users, the recovery matters far more than the boardroom. The exchange has reopened withdrawals for more assets in stages, and the pace at which it restores full service will shape whether young Pakistani traders keep their money on the platform. Binance CFO Justin Yek’s first weeks in the job will be judged on that score, not on his résumé.
Sources: Reuters, Bloomberg, FinanceFeeds, Unchained, CoinCentral. Read our earlier coverage: how the $6.3 billion hack happened and the latest recovery and withdrawals update. Also read: Binance founder CZ on Pakistan as a future crypto hub.
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