Bitcoin fell below $78,000 on Friday as concerns over a possible security breach at cryptocurrency exchange Binance shook digital asset markets, prompting several major crypto firms to freeze billions of dollars in funds linked to the incident.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency fell more than 4% to $77,994.96, extending its losses after crossing the psychologically important threshold of $80,000.
Etherthe second-largest cryptocurrency by market cap, fell 4.84% to $2,247.45, while Binance’s native token BNB fell 7.68% to $694.45.
Defying the sell-off, Hyperliquide’s HYPE token jumped 9.7% to $89.08.
Several cryptocurrency companies, including stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether, on Thursday froze a total of $2.54 billion in funds related to the alleged incident.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said his company had frozen more than $800 million in USD Coin, while Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company had halted transactions involving more than $1.5 billion in USDT potentially linked to the breach.
Ripple also helped prevent the movement of $200 million in funds linked to the alleged attack, according to Binance co-founder Yi He.
Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence identified nearly $6 billion in digital assets across 55 wallet addresses potentially associated with the incident, suggesting the scale of the alleged breach could be significantly greater than the frozen amount.
Binance did not explicitly confirm that a hack had taken place, saying it was investigating reports of a potential security issue.
“Our teams are aware of reports of a potential security issue and are actively investigating,” a Binance spokesperson said, adding that user funds remain safe.
Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao also sought to reassure investors that customer funds were safe, although he said the incident appeared to be a hack.
These developments have reignited concerns about security vulnerabilities in the cryptocurrency sector, which has suffered a series of major breaches in recent years.
In 2025, cryptocurrency exchange Bybit suffered a hack worth around $1.5 billion, while rival Bitget recently lost over $350 million in digital assets to cybertheft.
—CNBC’s Liz Napolitano and Davis Giangiulio contributed to this report.
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