$6.3bn stolen: Binance freezes funds after exchange wallets hit on 10 chains
Hackers linked to North Korea moved most of the money in about 20 minutes, and Binance says it has located roughly $3 billion of it.
By James Anderson ·
Binance is holding back withdrawals and working with partners to freeze accounts touched by a $6.3 billion raid on its wallets, the company said. Its co-founder Yi He said the exchange would cover "all hacking losses". Deposits kept processing, and the company said withdrawal service would resume within the next 48 hours.
Three points stand out from what TRM Labs and Chainalysis have said about the incident.
First, the trail points north. US blockchain analysis firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis attribute the attack to hackers from North Korea. TRM said the method lined up with earlier heists tied to the same source, including the 2025 breach of the exchange Bybit, which the FBI blamed on Pyongyang. "We make this judgment with high confidence," the firm said. North Korea's mission in Geneva and its embassy in China did not answer Reuters queries.
Second, the money moved fast. The raid hit Binance wallets across 10 blockchains on Friday, and TRM said most of the funds shifted hands within about 20 minutes. Binance has located roughly $3 billion so far; it has not said where the remaining $3.3 billion stands. An early look suggests the breach started with an engineer's laptop that gave an outsider a path into one system and from there to withdrawals the company had not authorized. "Our security team is tracing the full attack path through the compromised computer which may be the entry point of the incident," Binance said.
Third, prices fell. In Asian trading on Friday, Bitcoin lost more than 3% and touched $76,368, its lowest since mid-September. Ether dropped more than 3% to $2,178. BNB slipped 5% over 24 hours to $709.70, per CoinGecko. Coinbase Global shares fell 4.8%, and Strategy lost nearly 6% in extended US trading.
Chainalysis and other industry experts called it the largest crypto theft to date. "It's the biggest hack in history," Aravind Srinivasan, who heads systematic OTC at market maker GSR, said. Ballet Global founder Bobby Lee said on Friday that the Bitcoin taken from Binance is not coming back: "That's gone." He added, "The Bitcoin that's lost, that's all gone out into the hackers' hands."
Binance lets users buy, sell and trade digital assets. Its 2025 annual report lists 335 million registered users and about $162.8 billion in assets under custody. Tim Sun, a senior researcher at HashKey Group in Hong Kong, said the breach "may further dampen risk appetite and prompt investors to reassess the safety of assets held on centralized exchanges, as well as counterparty, solvency and liquidity risks."
Crypto prices had already come under strain from higher US interest rates and reduced buying by exchange-traded fund buyers. Bitcoin ended Friday at $76,368.
