Cryptocurrency giant Binance has reported the largest hack in history in which $6.3 billion of digital assets have been stolen.
After this massive security breach, the world’s largest crypto exchange froze about half of all those assets with the help of other platforms, adding this move will cover all the losses.
The initial investigation indicated the breach likely originated from a hacked laptop belonging to Binance engineer, granting unauthorized system access and withdrawal capabilities.
Binance co-founder Yi He assured that the company will cover all hacking losses. So to mitigate the impact, user deposits and withdrawals were temporarily suspended as a precaution.
Asset recovery efforts
Binance has located and frozen roughly $3 billion of the affected assets so far with the help of industry partners.
- Tether: Frozen ~$1.57 billion
- Circle: Frozen >$800 million
- Ripple: Frozen ~$200 million
- World Liberty Financial / BitGo: Frozen 27 million in stable coins and~2 million in World Liberty tokens.
The status of the remaining $3.3 billion remains updated.
Who’s allegedly behind the biggest heist ever?
Two blockchain analytics firms, TRM Labs and Chainalysis, have attributed the Binance security breach to TraderTraitor, an elite North Korean state-sponsored hacking unit.
According to the US blockchain analysis firm TRM Labs, it is suspected that North Korean hackers were behind a $6.3 billion raid on crypto.
An attacker moved approximately $6.36 billion out of Binance wallets on ten blockchains, most of it in about 20 minutes,” TRM Labs said in a blog post on its website.
The hack set a new record in the crypto industry, far surpassing the previous record-setting $1.5 billion Bybit hack in 2025.
Impact on industry and experts’ insights
The record-shattering hack cast a huge impact on industry. After the breach, Bitcoin dropped over 3 percent to a six-week low of $76,368 with Ether down over 3 percent to a two-month low of 2,178 and BNB is down 5% to $709.70.
Coinbase Global fell 4.8%, and Strategy (bitcoin buyer) fell nearly 6% in extended US trading. Analysts note this incident will prompt investors to re-evaluate the safety of centralized exchanges, counterparty risks, and overall liquidity/solvency risks
