Binance hacked for record $6.3 billion, withdrawals suspended after ‘complex attack’

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was hit Thursday evening by what investigators say is the largest cryptocurrency hack in history, with $6.3 billion in funds affected and about half of those assets frozen.

Customer withdrawals were temporarily suspended and co-CEO Richard Teng promised that the exchange would cover all losses.

“We promise to cover all losses due to the hack using our company funds. Your assets are safe,” Teng said on social media.

Binance has set aside money in a secure asset fund to allow users to handle edge cases, such as security breaches.

Here’s what you need to know:

Teng said the hack was not carried out by a single person. Initial findings pointed to a compromised laptop, but closer examination revealed broader security flaws.

“It was a complex attack,” Teng said. “The attacker also used a self-destruct mechanism that destroyed the tools and tracers.”

Binance said around $3 billion in assets have been “frozen on-chain so far” with the help of stablecoin issuers such as Tether and Circle (CRCL). Customer withdrawals are expected to resume in the next 48 hours, Binance co-CEO Yi He said in a separate social media post on Friday morning.

Thursday’s attack shook crypto markets and related stocks. Bitcoin (BTC-USD) fell 5% to around $77,000 on Friday.

Other major crypto assets also fell after the hack, with ether (ETH-USD) falling 4% to around $2,200. Binance’s native token BNB (BND-USD) also plunged more than 6%.

Crypto-related stocks were trading lower mid-morning Friday. Shares of Circle, trading platforms Coinbase (COIN) and Robinhood (HOOD), and digital asset treasury giant Strategy (MSTR) each fell between 8% and 14%.

The frozen assets include more than $2 billion in stablecoins. Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, “frozen more than $1.567 billion” of its USDT stablecoin in connection with the hack,” CEO Paolo Ardoino said on $27 million of its stablecoin, or $1, associated with the hack, according to CEO Zack Witkoff.

Although details are still emerging, the hack is shaping up to be the largest crypto theft in history, far surpassing the previous record set in February 2025, when attackers stole $1.5 billion from crypto derivatives exchange ByBit.

Blockchain analytics firms TRM Labs and Elliptic have linked the theft to North Korean hackers, with TRM attributing it “with high confidence” to a group known as TraderTraitor, the same group responsible for last year’s Bybit hack.

Elliptic estimated Friday that about 44% of the stolen assets had been frozen, with stablecoins accounting for almost all of those funds. The company estimates that attackers still control more than $3 billion in cryptocurrencies that token issuers cannot directly freeze.

Hackers appear to have compromised Binance’s wallet signing infrastructure, allowing them to authorize transactions that drained billions of dollars in cryptocurrency across multiple blockchains, according to the companies. Binance, in its preliminary stages, has conducted an investigation into the hack, which suggests that the incident may have started with a compromised engineer’s laptop. The exchange added that it found no evidence that the wallet passwords had been leaked.

North Korean hackers stole $2 billion in 2025, bringing the rogue regime’s total revenue from 2016 through the end of last year to $6.75 billion, according to data from crypto firm Chainalysis.

“This is probably the largest crypto hack on record, but the main distinction is that it does not currently appear to be a solvency event for Binance,” said Sean Farrell, head of digital assets at Fundstrat.

“This significantly reduces the risk of a negative feedback loop involving withdrawals, forced sales, a credit crunch and broader deleveraging,” he added.

Ines Ferre is a senior economics journalist at Yahoo Finance.

David Hollerith is a senior banking and finance journalist at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on @DsHollers.