Binance hacked, $6.3 billion in funds affected

Abstract:

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, said that in what the industry calls the largest cryptocurrency hacking attack in history, $6.3 billion in funds was affected. Digital token prices plummeted.

Binance has suspended all deposits and withdrawals. The company said it would bear all losses and "the safety of user funds is guaranteed." The company's co-founder He Yi later posted on X that withdrawal services are expected to resume in the next 48 hours, adding that recharge services have not been affected and are still operating normally.

Prior to this, the largest publicly disclosed cryptocurrency hacking attack occurred in February 2025, when attackers stole nearly $1.5 billion worth of tokens from the exchange Bybit. The Binance incident could be a setback for cryptocurrency loyalists who have just enjoyed two consecutive months of price rallies.

FTX and Mt. Infamous incidents of theft and fraud at former cryptocurrency giants such as Gox have kicked off long-lasting bear markets in the past. The industry has been trying to escape these historical shadows as U.S. President Donald Trump promises to usher in a new era of clearer cryptocurrency regulation.

Bitcoin fell 3% late in the U.S. trading session and fell another 3% during the Asian trading session, falling below $77,000 and hitting its lowest level since September before narrowing its losses; other tokens were also sold off.

“The rumored Binance hack is undoubtedly dragging down currency prices.” Fredrick Collins, CEO and co-founder of the encrypted data platform Velo Data, said, “Binance is a giant in the cryptocurrency field, and any blow to trust in the platform will affect confidence in the entire industry, especially when people are already worried about the increasing cyber attack capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI).”

Binance established an emergency insurance and reserve fund called the "Security of User Assets Fund" (SAFU) in 2018. According to the exchange, this fund is designed to protect customers under "extreme circumstances." Binance said in 2024 that the size of SAFU usually remains around $1 billion, but has changed with market fluctuations in the past.

Two major institutions that issue stablecoins said they had taken action to freeze the missing funds. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino posted on the X platform that the company had frozen more than $1.5 billion in stablecoins "related to a possible hack of the Binance exchange." Circle Internet Group Inc. Head Jeremy Allaire said the company’s $800 million stablecoin had been frozen amid “reports of a possible attack on Binance.”

A series of cryptocurrency security incidents have made market sentiment very fragile. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been stolen from Bitget in recent months, and tampering incidents related to Ledger devices have also resulted in millions of dollars in losses.

Ari Redbord, global policy director at blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs, said that "attackers are operating at an unprecedented speed and scale," but "so are the tools to track money." "Stablecoin issuers freeze funds within hours. Investigators track the flow of funds between different blockchains in real time," he said.

Traders were already bracing for the possibility of more volatility in the cryptocurrency market this week, with options worth $11 billion set to expire on Friday. The U.S. holds midterm elections in just days, when Democrats could regain control of one or both chambers of Congress, potentially increasing regulatory scrutiny of the industry.

During the nearly 20 years of cryptocurrency’s rise, exchange thefts and illegal activities have always followed, the most famous of which was the collapse of FTX founded by Sam Bankman-Fried in November 2022. Another probably most notorious hack to date occurred in 2011, when Japan-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox was attacked. Over time, the tokens stolen by hackers are worth billions of dollars at current market prices. Mt. Gox eventually went bankrupt.

“Hacker attacks in this field have been successful one after another, which has caused great harm to the cryptocurrency industry.” Tian Zeng, CEO of cryptocurrency hedge fund Third Eye, said, “In an era when the latest AI models are released almost every two weeks, vulnerability attacks continue to occur, which makes the entire industry dangerous.”

On the same day that the Binance incident occurred, the event contract trading platform Polymarket said that its international exchange suspended trading for one hour after a third-party software provider was hacked. Blockchain analysis platform Bubblemaps posted on the X platform that more than 700 Polymarket users had a total of $2.7 million stolen. A spokesman declined to comment on the figures.

Recent security incidents are not limited to cryptocurrency companies. Yonhap News Agency reported that South Korea's Dasin Securities disclosed a data breach this week, affecting about 38,000 customers, and Mirae Asset Global Investment also reported being hacked. In Japan, hackers on Tuesday threatened to release data on traders who used cloud services owned by GMO Internet Group for foreign exchange trading.