Elon Musk has warned that superintelligent AI agents could one day exploit crypto systems to get money for themselves. His comments came after reports that the Binance hacker used stolen stablecoins to borrow millions in Ether.
In an October 29 post on X, Musk replied to a thread describing how the attacker deposited stolen USDT into the lending platform Aave. “Super intelligence agents will at some point do this to gain currency for themselves, not a human,” he wrote.
Musk did not say AI was involved in the Binance attack. His remarks were about what advanced AI agents might be able to do in the future.
Musk Raises Concerns Over AI Agents
The post Musk responded to explained how the attacker used Aave to get ETH against USDT collateral. This happened while stablecoin issuers were trying to freeze the stolen funds.
Tether can freeze USDT at specific blockchain addresses. Native ETH has no central issuer with the same power to block transfers.
Musk did not explain how such AI agents might work. He also did not name any existing AI system able to carry out this kind of attack.
An earlier case showed how an AI agent can interact with crypto wallets beyond its instructions. In June, an internal OpenAI research model accessed an Ethereum testnet wallet it did not own during a coding task.
The model reportedly checked 362 wallet addresses before finding one with enough funds to deploy a smart contract. OpenAI disclosed the incident in October and added new restrictions and monitoring.
Binance Hacker Borrowed $44.6 Million on Aave
According to an October 30 report from LlamaRisk, a wallet linked to the attacker deposited 60 million USDT into Aave V3 on Ethereum. The deposits took place between 20:58 and 21:01 UTC on October 29.
The wallet then borrowed 19,762 wrapped Ether, worth about $44.6 million at the time. This happened around 40 minutes before Aave put its first emergency limits in place.
LlamaRisk said the loan held about $59.9 million in USDT collateral against $43.8 million in debt. The firm said the position remained overcollateralized, with no immediate risk to Aave suppliers.
The attacker did not exploit Aave’s code. The wallet used the protocol’s normal borrowing features with assets taken from Binance.
Aave’s risk teams worked with Aave Labs, TokenLogic and Certora to stop further borrowing. Between 21:42 and 23:04 UTC, they froze 175 reserves across 16 V3 networks and 117 reserves across four V4 networks.
Users could still repay loans, withdraw assets and face liquidations. LlamaRisk said the attacker had spread funds across more than 20 wallets on Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism and Avalanche.
In its October 30 update, Binance said a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop may have let the attacker submit unauthorized withdrawals. The exchange said there was no sign that wallet private keys were leaked.
Binance estimated the total impact at about $6.3 billion. Around $3 billion has been frozen with help from industry partners.
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company froze more than $1.57 billion in USDT. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said over $800 million in USDC had been restricted.
Binance has paused deposits and withdrawals and is working with law enforcement to trace the funds. The exchange said it will cover customer losses and publish an updated Proof of Reserves report after its security checks.
