Binance hit in $6.3bn crypto heist, the largest on record, as withdrawals halt
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has suffered the biggest digital heist on record. Late on Thursday night, attackers drained about $6.3 billion in digital assets in the space of roughly twenty minutes, and the exchange promptly suspended customer withdrawals. Binance insists its users’ money is safe and that it will cover the whole loss from company funds — but the raid has shaken the entire crypto industry all the same.
How the attack worked
According to Binance, the attackers got into its transaction-approval system and moved funds out of its internet-connected “hot wallets” into wallets they controlled. Co-chief executive Richard Teng described it as a complex attack that may have begun with a compromised software engineer’s laptop; the company later said it had found additional points of breach. The intruders also used software designed to wipe their traces, which has made the investigation harder.
How much was stopped
Around $3 billion of the stolen assets has been frozen so far. The largest share came from Tether, which froze nearly $1.57 billion in USDT, while Circle blocked more than $800 million in USDC. What happens to the remaining roughly $3.3 billion is still unclear, and Binance has set aside about $6.34 billion in company funds to cover the losses. Its stated aim is to restore withdrawals in phases within about 48 hours.
Who is blamed — and who is not saying so
Blockchain investigators TRM Labs and Chainalysis say the attack bears the fingerprints of TraderTraitor, a North Korea-linked group, and resembles the $1.5 billion theft from Bybit in February 2025. That, though, is their assessment, not a confirmed finding: neither Binance nor any government has endorsed it. The FBI and the US Secret Service are now involved in the investigation, and Abu Dhabi’s regulator, which issued Binance’s main operating licence, says it is monitoring the fallout closely.
The market, and the industry, react
The news hit prices at once. Bitcoin dropped to a six-week low of $76,368, ether fell to a two-month low of $2,178, and Binance’s own token, BNB, slid by nearly ten percent, though both leading coins recovered some ground on Friday. Rival exchanges, meanwhile, have moved fast to calm their own customers: Coinbase says it adjusted its offline key-storage systems purely out of caution, and Kraken says it studies industry incidents for lessons it can apply. Chris Perkins, Franklin Templeton’s head of crypto, put the wider warning bluntly — for crypto to reach its full potential, he said, the security problem has to be addressed immediately.
