Binance hit by $6.3 billion breach in what could be the largest crypto heist ever
Editorial illustration — Press Pass USABinance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, said a security breach had an estimated $6.3 billion impact — an amount analysts said could make it the biggest crypto heist on record — and that about $3 billion in assets has been frozen so far.
The company said it worked with partners to locate and freeze the affected assets, but gave no update on the status of the remaining roughly $3.3 billion. Binance co-founder Yi He said the company would cover "all hacking losses" and that user funds are safe.
Binance's initial investigation suggests the breach may have started with a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, which let an attacker gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions, the company said. It added that it found no evidence of any wallet private key leak.
As a precaution, Binance temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while its security teams conduct checks, secure wallet infrastructure and trace the affected assets, working with law enforcement and industry partners. The company said withdrawals will resume as soon as the security issue is resolved. Binance.US was not impacted, according to live coverage of the incident.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said that as of 8:30 p.m. ET on Thursday, at least $5.912 billion had been confirmed stolen, with funds moving across multiple blockchains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron and Ripple. Some blockchain security experts told CoinDesk that North Korea was likely behind the hack, though Binance has not confirmed who carried it out and the investigation is ongoing.
The freeze effort has spread across the crypto industry. Stablecoin issuer Tether said it froze more than $1.57 billion in USDT linked to the incident, while Circle froze more than $800 million in USDC. Ripple froze roughly $200 million, and the Arbitrum Security Council took emergency action to freeze 74.56 million Arbitrum tokens held in the hacker's wallet. World Liberty Financial, a crypto company linked to President Donald Trump and his family, said about $27 million in its USD1 stablecoin was frozen.
The breach sent crypto prices lower. Bitcoin fell to a six-week low, down about 3% to around $76,470, while ether dropped more than 3% and Binance's own BNB token fell more than 8% over 24 hours to about $694, according to Reuters and market data cited by CoinDesk.
If the $6.3 billion figure holds, the theft would dwarf the previous largest crypto hack — the roughly $1.5 billion stolen from the Bybit exchange in 2025 in an attack linked to North Korean hackers. Binance, which counts 335 million registered users globally, said the incident's final loss remains undetermined as tracing continues.
Sources: Reuters (Oct 30, 2026); CoinDesk (Oct 29, 2026); BusinessWorld / Reuters (Oct 30, 2026); TradingView live updates (Oct 30, 2026).
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