Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, was hit late Thursday by what investigators say is the biggest crypto hack in history, with $6.3 billion in funds impacted and roughly half of those assets frozen. Customer deposits and withdrawals have been temporarily suspended, and co-CEO Richard Teng promised the exchange will cover all losses. “We are committed to covering all hacked losses through our company funds. Your assets are safe,” Teng said on social media. Binance has money set aside in a Secure Asset Fund for Users to handle extreme cases, such as security breaches. Read more: How to keep your crypto safe Teng said the hack was not carried out by one person. Initial findings pointed to a compromised laptop, but further review revealed broader security breaches. “This was a complex attack,” Teng said. “The attacker also used a self-destruct mechanism that destroyed tooling and tracers.” Binance said that about $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 should resume by Sunday, Binance co-CEO Yi He said in a separate social media post. The Thursday attack has rattled crypto markets and related stocks. Bitcoin (BTC-USD) tumbled 5% to around $76,600 earlier Friday morning. Other major crypto assets also tumbled after the hack, with ether (ETH-USD) dropping 4% to around $2,200. Binance’s native token, BNB (BND-USD), also plunged by more than 5%. Crypto-related stocks traded lower mid-morning on Friday. Shares of Circle, trading platforms Coinbase (COIN) and Robinhood (HOOD), and digital-asset Treasury giant Strategy (MSTR) each shed 8% to 14%. The frozen assets include over $2 billion in stablecoins. Tether, the world’s largest stablecoin issuer, “froze more than 1.567B” of its USDT stablecoin in relation to the hack,” CEO Paolo Ardoino said on X. The second-largest issuer, Circle, froze another $800 million “in coordination with law enforcement,” CEO Jeremy Allaire said. World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency venture co-founded by President Trump and his sons, said it froze $27 million of its stablecoin, USD1, 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 exceeding the previous record set in February 2025, when attackers stole $1.5 billion from the crypto derivatives exchange ByBit. Blockchain analysis 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 have been frozen, with stablecoins accounting for nearly all of those funds. The firm estimated that attackers still controlled over $3 billion in crypto that token issuers cannot directly freeze. The 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 firms. Binance, in its preliminary stage, has conducted an investigation into the hack, which suggests the incident may have begun with a compromised engineer’s laptop. The exchange added that it has found no evidence that wallet passwords were leaked. 140.19 -20.40 (-12.70%) As of 11:53:21 AM EDT. Market Open. COIN MSTR HOOD North Korean hackers swiped $2 billion in 2025, bringing the rogue regime’s total haul since 2016 through the end of last year to $6.75 billion, according to data from crypto firm Chainalysis. “This is likely the largest crypto hack on record, but the key distinction is that it does not currently appear to be a solvency event for Binance,” Fundstrat head of digital assets Sean Farrell said. “That meaningfully reduces the risk of a negative feedback loop involving withdrawals, forced selling, tighter credit, and broader deleveraging,” he added. Ines Ferre is a senior business reporter at Yahoo Finance. David Hollerith is a senior banking and finance reporter at Yahoo Finance. Follow him on X @DsHollers.
Click Here For The Original Source.
——————————————————–
