Binance targeted in record crypto heist with $6.3 billion in potential losses

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, said Thursday it’s investigating reports of a potential security issue as its founder said the incident “does look like a hack on Binance.” The company said late Thursday the estimated total impact was at more than $6 billion, which could be one of the most significant of such security incidents on record.

It wasn’t immediately clear the extent of the damage hackers might have been able to cause, and Binance had not explicitly confirmed that funds had been pilfered. The company said its teams are “working around the clock” to resolve the issue.

“Rest assured that user funds are completely safe,” a Binance spokesperson said in a statement.

“Our security teams are reviewing all relevant information with urgency, and we will provide updates through official Binance channels as soon as we have verified information,” the statement continued.

The company wrote on its X account that the estimated total impact sat at around $6.3 billion. It said it has worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with roughly $3 billion frozen on-chain so far.

“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 unauthorized withdrawal transactions,” the company wrote.

“We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak,” it added.

Binance said it will share more technical details once the investigation is complete and when the facts are “fully verified.”

“Our teams work closely with law enforcement, issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners to trace and freeze additional assets,” the company wrote in a separate post earlier Thursday.

Binance also said all deposits and withdrawals are temporarily suspended while it conducts security checks, freezes funds and works with law enforcement.

Stablecoin providers Tether and Circle each said they froze funds Thursday in response to the incident.

Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, wrote on X that the company had frozen the equivalent of more than $800 million in currency associated with the incident “in coordination with law enforcement.” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said on X that the company froze the equivalent of more than $1.5 billion in currency related to “a potential Binance exchange hack.”

The price of bitcoin dropped 3.2% Thursday evening to under $79,000.

Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, who in 2023 pleaded guilty to a felony related to his failure to prevent money laundering on the platform and stepped down as CEO. President Donald Trump pardoned him in 2025.

Zhao posted on X on Thursday that “User funds are safe!” but added that the incident “does look like a hack on Binance.” He added that while he doesn’t manage Binance anymore, “as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered.”

Zhao was released from prison last year after being sentenced for violating the Bank Secrecy Act. He was the first person ever sentenced to prison time for violations of that law, which requires U.S. financial institutions to know who their customers are, to monitor transactions and to file reports of suspicious activity. Prosecutors said no one had ever violated the regulations to the extent Zhao did. Zhao and Binance have been key supporters of some of the Trump family’s crypto enterprises.

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AP writers Chan Ho-him and Barbara Ortutay contributed.