Binance says the estimated impact of the breach is about $6.3 billion, with roughly $3 billion frozen on-chain, while blockchain analysts attribute the attack to a North Korea-linked group.
Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, said in a post on its Latin America X account that the total estimated impact of the security incident is around $6.3 billion, and that about $3 billion has been frozen on-chain so far. The exchange said all deposits and withdrawals were temporarily suspended at about 00:30 GMT on Friday while its teams run security checks, secure wallet infrastructure and work with law enforcement. If the figure holds, it would be more than four times the roughly $1.5 billion taken from the Bybit platform in February 2025, previously the largest crypto theft on record.
Binance's initial investigation suggests the breach began with a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, which let an unauthorised party reach a service container and execute unauthorised withdrawal transactions. The company says it has found no evidence of private-key leaks from its wallets and has promised a detailed technical analysis once its investigation is complete. Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs said it has "high confidence" the attack was carried out by TraderTraitor, a North Korea-linked hacking unit believed to be part of the Lazarus Group, and the Guardian reports that Chainalysis also attributes it to the same group. Binance itself has not publicly named an attacker, and US authorities had not responded to requests for comment at the time of the reports. Stablecoin issuer Tether said it froze about $1.6 billion and Circle said it froze more than $800 million in USDC.
Binance executives have sought to reassure its roughly 335 million registered users, with co-CEO Richard Teng saying that users' money is safe and that the company will cover every loss; the Guardian noted that Binance did not explicitly confirm the funds were stolen, although TRM and Chainalysis put the losses above $6 billion. Markets reacted quickly: bitcoin fell more than 3% to a six-week low of $76,368 in early Asian trading, according to the Guardian, and Coinbase shares slid 4.8%. The attached video is a Euronews report on the incident, not footage of the attack itself, and figures and attribution may change as the investigation proceeds. This report updates earlier coverage of the freezes by Tether and Circle with Binance's own damage estimate and the analysts' attribution.
