Binance Hack

Hackers stole $6.3 billion from Binance. Analysts call it the biggest crypto heist on record.

Late Thursday, Binance said it had frozen roughly $3 billion of the stolen funds. Close to half of the total stayed in the hackers' hands, BBC News reported.

TRM Labs and Chainalysis blamed the theft on TraderTraitor, an elite North Korean hacking unit, The Guardian reported. Ari Redbord, TRM's global head of policy, told the BBC the hack was a "watershed moment" unlike anything the industry has seen. It dwarfs the previous record, a $1.5 billion hack of the Bybit exchange in February 2025 that the FBI also linked to North Korea.

A compromised laptop belonging to a Binance engineer let an attacker slip into a company system and send unauthorized withdrawals, Binance said, according to NBC News. That was the initial finding. Co-chief executive Richard Teng later told CNBC the breach involved a complex process, not the misuse of one worker's access, and that no wallet private keys had leaked.

Crypto data firm Arkham Intelligence linked nearly $6 billion across 55 wallet addresses tied to the exploit, CNBC reported.

Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals while it rebuilds its withdrawal security. Co-chief executive Yi He told CNBC the exchange would cover every loss through its reserve fund. Teng said withdrawals should resume within 48 hours.

Stablecoin issuers moved fast. Tether froze about $1.6 billion. Circle froze more than $800 million in assets tied to the hack, their chief executives said, according to NBC News. Ripple froze an additional $200 million, CNBC reported. Funds held at exchanges like Binance carry no automatic insurance the way bank deposits do, NBC News reported, leaving any refund up to the company's discretion.

Bitcoin fell as much as 4.3 percent, dropping toward $76,000, NBC News and The Guardian reported. Shares of Coinbase and bitcoin buyer Strategy slid too, in after-hours trading, The Guardian said.

Changpeng Zhao founded Binance. He pleaded guilty to a money laundering violation in 2023 and received a pardon from President Trump in 2025. Online, he wrote that "user funds are safe." Binance said it would publish a full technical report and an updated proof of reserves once the investigation is complete, CNBC reported.