Binance hack hits $6.3bn in suspected record crypto heist

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, says $6.3bn (£4.7bn) of digital assets have been hit by what analysts call the biggest crypto theft on record. About half of the affected assets have been frozen, but much remains in the hackers' hands, and the company has halted withdrawals while promising to cover all customer losses.

The bulk of the heist unfolded in about 20 minutes from 20:05 GMT on Thursday, from the wallets Binance uses to process transactions, according to TRM Labs, cited by MercoPress. The attackers had funded an operator wallet 36 hours earlier, a speed TRM's Ari Redbord said was "the product of long preparation". Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said the attack "was not carried out by one person": an engineer's compromised laptop was the suspected entry point, but "additional points of breach" were later found.

TRM Labs and Chainalysis both said they had "high confidence" the culprit is TraderTraitor, also known as Lazarus Group, the North Korea-linked unit the FBI blamed for the $1.5bn Bybit hack in 2025, until now the sector's largest, the BBC reported. Western security agencies have previously said such thefts finance Pyongyang's weapons programmes; the regime denies involvement and its missions did not respond to requests for comment, according to France 24. There has been no official attribution, though the US Secret Service says it is "working around the clock" with partners to trace and recover the funds.

The money trail splits in two. Stablecoin issuers Tether, Circle, Ripple and World Liberty Financial — the Trump family's crypto venture — froze roughly half the stolen assets. But TRM estimates about $2.4bn in bitcoin and ether is beyond reach, because no company can block those tokens. That is the structural problem the theft exposes: as Check Point's Jayant Dave put it, "attackers no longer need the vault keys. They target the systems and people with authority to use them."

Markets flinched. Bitcoin fell more than 4% to a six-week low of $76,368 and ether dropped to $2,178 before stabilising, France 24 reported; shares in Coinbase slid 4.8% even though the exchange said it was unaffected. Binance, which says it holds more than $160bn in custody for over 300 million registered users, will cover losses from its protection fund, a $1bn bitcoin reserve and its own resources, according to Teng. The smaller Binance.US platform is not affected.

The next test comes fast: Binance expects to resume withdrawals within about 40 hours and will publish a full proof-of-reserves report on Monday — the document that will show whether its balance sheet can absorb the cost of its promise to make customers whole.