Binance says $6.3bn in crypto hit by hack, the largest in history
Binance, the world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange, says a security incident affected about $6.3bn of assets, making it the largest crypto hack on record. About half has been frozen with help from other firms, withdrawals are suspended and the company says it will cover all losses.
Binance said on Thursday, 29 October, that a "security incident" on its platform had affected about $6.3bn (£4.7bn) of assets. It is by far the largest crypto theft on record, more than four times the $1.5bn stolen from the Bybit exchange in 2025, an attack linked to North Korea.
Early checks suggest an engineer's laptop was compromised, which let the attacker make unauthorised withdrawals, Binance said in a series of online updates. About half of the affected assets have been frozen with the help of other companies: stablecoin issuer Tether said it froze more than $1.5bn and Circle more than $800m, both in coordination with law enforcement. Withdrawals remain disabled "until the environment is confirmed to be secure", co-chief executive Yi He said.
Binance says it will "cover all losses". Its founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the company but remains a major shareholder, wrote on X that "it does look like a hack". The smaller Binance.US platform said it was not affected. Blockchain analysis firm TRM Labs attributed the attack "with high confidence" to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking unit; Binance has not commented on that link.
Markets reacted quickly: bitcoin fell more than 4% after the alerts, with Ethereum and Solana also sharply lower. Investigators say the attacker still holds a very large amount of stolen crypto, so efforts to trace and recover it are far from over.