[DigitalToday reporter Hyunwoo Choo] Tesla CEO Elon Musk (일론 머스크) predicted that a superintelligent AI agent could in future steal cryptocurrency for itself rather than for humans. On Oct. 30, local time, blockchain media outlet U.Today reported that Musk expressed the view in a reply to an X post about a major security breach at Binance.

Musk wrote that a superintelligent agent would one day do this to obtain currency for itself rather than for humans. He added that AI agents with superhuman intelligence could carry out the process on their own in the future.

The comment came after a security breach at Binance involving about $6.3 billion in crypto assets. Binance said it had already frozen about $3 billion of affected assets by working with blockchain partners.

The post Musk responded to was written by crypto commentator Blainy. Blainy described how hackers bypassed freezes on funds stolen from Binance. Tether and Circle froze billions of dollars' worth of USDT and USDC in response to the breach.

Still, the hackers were reported to have secured ethereum before the funds were fully frozen. The hackers were said to have deposited $60 million worth of USDT into decentralised lending protocol Aave and then borrowed about $44.6 million worth of wrapped ETH. Centralised stablecoins such as USDT and USDC can be frozen by issuers, but ETH has no central issuer and cannot be frozen in the same way.

The case is drawing attention because Musk linked the possibility of AI autonomously securing financial means to a security incident. It also highlighted how the difference between centralised stablecoin freezes and decentralised assets appeared in the actual flow of funds.