a total of 7,019 bitcoins were first transferred out from a suspicious exchange-based hot wallet
Which exchange? Can you provide link to original source of this news?
7000
BTC is not big amount and if that address belong to single individual or institutional investment firm than he/they can move whatever bitcoin they want to either sell or to securely store in multiple cold wallets. Movement of large amount of bitcoin from one address to another doesn't always mean that it got hacked.
True, the problem is that it happened immediately after the SYS/MANA pump/hack/money laundering scheme (not sure what to call it yet). The funds originated from Binance hot wallet 1NDyJtNTjmwk5xPNhjgAMu4HDHigtobu1s and trading was shut down immediately after the transfers. No comment has been made since (to the best of my knowledge) on the wallet address, although all funds have been assured to be SAFU by Binance.
Yes it could be an institution, but Binance also has limits on withdraws, 2 BTC for unverified accounts, 100 BTC for verified, and institutions/users must first contact them for a higher limit. If you were an institution, or Binance securing their funds, why not make just 1 withdraw, this wallet had multiple large withdraws over a span of 40 minutes. Almost points towards somebody trying to get away with as much as possible before they are noticed (speculation). It appears the BTC is now being broken down into 100 BTC batches and distributed, I am not very tech savy, so not too sure what to make of it. Possibly somebody that is good as blockchain analysis could offer some input.
Regards