Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, suspended all withdrawals on Thursday after a major security breach and a suspected cyber heist. The exchange resumed deposit operations after a brief pause, confirming it remains unaffected.
An estimated $6.3 billion has been affected, more than four times the $1.5 billion lost in the 2025 Bybit attack, making it the largest cryptocurrency attack.
Binance has worked with partners to freeze almost $3 billion in funds. Stablecoin issuers such as Circle and Tether have frozen related assets.
"Binance will cover all hacking losses," Binance co-founder Yi He said.While the exchange promised to cover all the losses in the hacking incident, early Asian trading has taken a hit.
Bitcoin dropped 2.3 per cent to hit a six-week low of $77,218. Ether tumbled 3.67 per cent to a two-month low of $2,241. BNB, a token that was originally launched as Binance Coin to pay Binance fees, fell more than 8 per cent to $694.
Binance reiterated that it found no evidence of any private wallet key leaks and that the team is working to resolve the issue safely and thoroughly.
SpaceX founder and Dogecoin enthusiast, Elon Musk, reacted to the hack with, “Everyday is Zeroday”, hinting at the vulnerabilities in digital systems and several attacks driven by AI agents in the past few months.
The company’s initial investigation suggested that the attack may have stemmed from an employee’s laptop.
Binance wrote on X, “ Binance's initial investigation suggests that the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions.”
The exchange said its security team is tracing the attack path through the compromised computer. However, the root cause is yet to be found.
According to the exchange's 2024 annual report, Binance has more than 335 million registered users globally and had about $160 billion in assets under custody.
The exchange has previously faced multiple regulatory complications in different countries. In 2023, the exchange pleaded guilty to violating US anti-money laundering (AML) laws, resulting in a $4.3 billion penalty. The founder, Changpeng Zhao, stepped down as CEO, served a prison sentence, and later received a U.S. presidential pardon in 2025.
Authorities in the UK, Japan, Hong Kong and Brazil have also repeatedly issued warnings and launched local compliance probes.
