Binance hit by $6.3bn hack, freezes half of stolen funds

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, announced on Thursday it had suffered a major breach affecting assets worth nearly $6.3 billion. The company said about half of the stolen funds were frozen to prevent a massive theft. In a series of posts on X, Binance assured users their funds were “completely safe,” but also stated it would cover all losses resulting from the attack.

Binance said its teams are working with authorities, token issuers, data analytics firms, and industry partners to identify and freeze additional assets that may have been targeted. Changpeng Zhao, the exchange’s CEO who remains its majority shareholder, said “the breach does appear to have targeted Binance,” estimating losses could exceed $1 billion “slightly.”

Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, the issuer of the USDT stablecoin, said his company froze about $1.6 billion linked to the Binance hack. Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, announced his firm froze roughly $800 million in USDC, explaining the move was coordinated with authorities. Both USDT and USDC are stablecoins pegged to the US dollar.

The US Department of Justice and the FBI did not respond to requests for comment from Agence France-Presse. Industry observers noted that hackers had gained access to the platform prior to Binance’s announcement of the breach.

The total funds affected by the hack are about four times greater than the previous largest cyberattack, when $1.5 billion was stolen from Bybit in February 2025 in an operation attributed to North Korea-linked hackers known as Trader Traitor.

Blockchain investigations firm TRM Labs said it has a “high degree of confidence” that the Trader Traitor group also orchestrated the Binance hack, citing “reliable intelligence from both on-chain and off-chain sources.” The company added that several characteristics of the attack matched previous thefts linked to North Korea. Trader Traitor is believed to be part of the Lazarus Group, which was accused of hacking Sony Pictures in 2014.

Major cryptocurrencies briefly dropped in value following the attack, except for stablecoins, whose prices fluctuate only within narrow margins. Bitcoin fell about 5% at the end of the US trading session before paring losses to 0.83% by around 05:00 GMT, while Ether declined 0.81%. Binance’s own BNB token rose 2.67% after initially losing around 10%.

The cyberattack comes amid concerns among analysts that advances in artificial intelligence models could threaten encryption protocols and information security. Some pointed to this week’s announcements by OpenAI and Anthropic of technical breakthroughs in codebreaking as an early sign of change in the field, though there is no direct practical application yet. The blockchain protocol underlying cryptocurrencies relies on encryption to ensure transaction security and, in theory, system invulnerability.