Binance freezes $2.5 billion after suspected hack; Bitcoin sinks below $79,000
Bitcoin slumped as much as 3.7% to its lowest level since September, with other tokens also selling off. US stocks ended lower, with the Nasdaq 100 tech index dropping nearly 1.4%.
A suspected hack of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, prompted it to freeze more than $2.5 billion in assets and sent the price of digital tokens tumbling. Binance said it hasn’t confirmed any impact to customer funds.
“We are aware of reports of a potential security issue and we are actively investigating,” a Binance spokesperson said. “At this stage, we have not confirmed any impact to user funds. 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.”
Still, Binance said it has currently frozen $2.54 billion in assets and may raise that figure further as its teams work with law enforcement, issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners.
Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao said the exchange may have been hacked but he expects all user funds will be fully covered. Zhao, who goes by CZ, no longer runs the company but remains its largest shareholder.
Online forums were rife with loss estimates and theories of how the attack was designed, none of them confirmed. Blockchain tracker Arkham has identified wallets associated with the suspected hacker holding about $5.9 billion in digital assets, though the figure does not necessarily represent the amount stolen from Binance.
Bitcoin slumped as much as 3.7% — falling below $79,000 to its lowest level since September — with other tokens also selling off. US stocks ended lower, with the Nasdaq 100 tech index dropping nearly 1.4%.
“The rumored Binance hack is definitely driving down coin prices,” said Fredrick Collins, chief executive and co-founder of crypto data platform Velo Data. “Binance is such a behemoth in crypto that any hit to confidence in them is a hit to confidence in the industry as a whole, especially as people have already been skittish over the increasing cyber capabilities of AI.”
For crypto faithful who’d been basking in a two-month-long price rebound amid the tightening embrace of institutional Wall Street, the incident is a potential setback. Notorious episodes of theft and fraud among fallen crypto giants such as FTX and Mt. Gox set the stage for protracted bear markets in the past, bruises the industry has worked to put behind it in US President Donald Trump’s promised new era of regulatory clarity for cryptocurrencies.
To date, the biggest publicly known crypto hack occurred at exchange Bybit in February 2025, in which attackers made off with almost $1.5 billion of tokens.
Binance said it has suspended withdrawals on multiple networks. “This is a precautionary measure and we are working to restore services as soon as it is safe to do so,” the company said in a statement.
An emergency insurance and reserve fund from Binance called the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) was established in 2018 to serve a backstop for customers in “extreme situations,” according to the exchange. The SAFU fund is generally maintained at around $1 billion, but has fluctuated in the past in tandem with market movements, Binance said in 2024.
The two biggest stablecoin issuers said they took steps to freeze missing currency. Paolo Ardoino, the chief executive officer of Tether, said in an X post that it froze more than $1.5 billion of the stablecoin “related to a potential Binance exchange hack.” Jeremy Allaire, who runs Circle Internet Group Inc., said $800 million of its coin had been frozen amid “reports of a potential exploit involving Binance.”
“Hot wallets getting drained is not something new to crypto, but the amount would be a meaningful hack on the largest crypto exchange,” said James Seyffart at Bloomberg Intelligence. “It’s definitely a bad look. And this is one after another,” he said of a recent spate of security incidents.
Already fragile sentiment was hit further after a bruising run of crypto security incidents. In recent months, hundreds of millions of dollars were drained from Bitget, while tampering tied to Ledger devices also led to millions of dollars in losses.
Traders had already been bracing for greater volatility in the crypto market this week, with $11 billion in options set to expire Friday. This comes days ahead of the US midterm elections taking place next week, when Democrats could potentially retake one or both chambers of Congress and open the door to greater regulatory scrutiny for the industry.
Exchange thefts and malfeasance has been an ever-present backdrop of crypto’s almost two-decade ascent, the most famous of which was the collapse of Sam Bankman-Fried’s FTX in November 2022. In what remains perhaps the most notorious hacking incident, Japan-based Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox was struck in 2011. Over time, the hackers made off with tokens worth billions of dollars based on the current market price. Mt. Gox eventually went bankrupt.
“It’s a huge damage to crypto because of the consistent successful hacks in the space,” said Tian Zeng, chief executive officer of crypto hedge fund Third Eye. “The fact that exploits keep happening makes it dangerous in the age of newest AI models being released every two weeks.”
The incident came on the same day event-contract venue Polymarket halted trading on its international exchange for an hour after it said that a third-party software provider was compromised. More than 700 Polymarket users were drained of $2.7 million in funds, said blockchain analytics platform Bubblemaps, in a post on X. A spokesman declined to comment on the numbers.
