Hackers have stolen an estimated $6.3 billion from Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, in what analysts say is the biggest crypto theft in history. The money poured out of the exchange's own hot wallets across 10 blockchains on Thursday, most of it in about 20 minutes, before the exchange slammed deposits and withdrawals shut and began freezing what it could still reach.
Binance's position is clear, and it has put it in writing. The exchange says deposits were not touched and that "user funds remain safe," and it expects to resume withdrawals within about 48 hours once security checks, wallet repairs and asset tracing are complete, working with law enforcement and industry partners. Co-founder Yi He stated the pledge plainly: "User funds are safe. Binance will cover all hacking losses." The exchange keeps an emergency insurance fund for exactly this kind of event, and says the losses will be covered from that fund and company resources — not by customers.
The exchange's founder, Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs Binance but remains its biggest shareholder, was blunter than the company itself: "User funds are safe! It does look like a hack on Binance. Appreciate the quick freeze from Tether (~$971m) and Circle (~$823m). I don't manage Binance (.com) anymore, but as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered." Asked later about an estimate that about $1 billion remained exposed after the freezes, he answered: "Loss might be a bit higher than that, but will cover."
Binance's own first findings point inside the building. Its initial investigation suggests the break-in began with a hacked laptop belonging to one of its engineers, which gave the attacker access to an internal system used to submit withdrawals — so the transfers went out looking like ordinary business. On the Bitcoin network alone, 18,270 bitcoin worth about $1.4 billion left a Binance hot wallet in 11 transactions, then split into 19 wallets that had not moved the coins onward by early Friday. Binance says there is no evidence that any wallet private keys were leaked. In its words: "The incident stems from multiple factors. Our security team is tracing the full attack path through the compromised computer which may be the entry point of the incident." The exchange calls it a security breach and says it will only publish confirmed figures as the investigation proceeds.
The counter-attack moved fast because stablecoins can be switched off by the companies that issue them. Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino announced that Tether had frozen more than 1.567 billion USDT "related to a potential Binance exchange hack" — a bigger figure than the one Zhao had cited hours earlier. Circle froze more than $800 million of its USDC in coordination with law enforcement, Ripple froze roughly $200 million, and smaller amounts were frozen by other issuers. Binance puts the verified frozen total at about $3 billion. That still leaves roughly $3.3 billion of the stolen assets unaccounted for in the exchange's statements, and about $2.4 billion of it is in bitcoin and ether, which no company can freeze.
Who did it is an accusation, not yet a proven fact. Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs says it attributes the theft, "with high confidence," to TraderTraitor, the North Korean state hacking unit the FBI blamed for stealing $1.5 billion from the Bybit exchange in February 2025 — a theft this one dwarfs four times over. Chainalysis reached the same assessment, and investigator ZachXBT described the attacker as likely the Lazarus group. Binance itself has not named any attacker, no government has formally confirmed the attribution, and North Korea's mission in Geneva and its embassy in China did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Markets took the hit within hours. Bitcoin dropped more than 3 percent to a six-week low of $76,368 in Asian trading on Friday — well below the $80,000 line — ether fell to a two-month low, Binance's own BNB token slid, shares in rival exchange Coinbase fell nearly 5 percent, and more than $1.5 billion in leveraged crypto bets were wiped out in forced liquidations in a single day. The sell-off landed on a market already under pressure from higher U.S. interest rates and cooling demand from fund buyers.
For the ordinary person with money on Binance — and the exchange counts 335 million registered users — the practical position today is this: your balance is not paying for this theft, if the exchange keeps its word. Binance says deposits are safe, that it will cover every hacking loss itself, and that withdrawals reopen once its checks are done. What nobody can promise is the recovery of the unfrozen billions now sitting in the attacker's wallets, and that is why the pledge matters: the loss stops with the company, not with the saver who trusted it. The incident is also the sharpest reminder yet that money parked on any centralised exchange is only as safe as that exchange's own computers — one hacked laptop, on Binance's own account, was enough to open the door to the largest theft the industry has ever seen.
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