Binance says $6.3bn crypto theft is biggest hack in history

Binance says about $6.3bn (£4.8bn) in cryptocurrency was stolen in a security breach which appears to be the largest crypto heist ever recorded.

The world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange has suspended deposits and withdrawals after the suspected hack, while about $3bn in assets has been frozen.

Binance said an initial investigation indicated that the attacker gained access to an engineer’s compromised laptop and then used it to carry out unauthorised transactions.

The exchange said it would cover all losses and insisted that users’ funds were “safe”.

“We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice.”

Binance said it would publish a “detailed” technical post-mortem after the investigation had concluded.

Blockchain intelligence firm TRM said there was “high confidence” that the attack had been carried out by TraderTraitor, a hacking unit linked to North Korea.

“We base this assessment on robust on and off-chain intelligence sources,” TRM said in its report on the incident.

Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s founder and largest shareholder, said earlier that the exchange appeared to have been hacked.

“I don’t manage Binance (.com) anymore, but as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered,” Zhao said in a post on X.

Zhao stepped down as Binance chief executive in 2023 and no longer runs the company’s operations.

The incident caused the price of Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, to fall by about 5 percent, taking it below $77,000.

Sean Foley, an expert in crypto markets at Macquarie University in Sydney, said the breach could damage confidence among individual investors.

Foley said the attack also underlined the risks associated with centralised exchanges and could encourage more traders to move to decentralised platforms.

“Any assets held at a centralised exchange are only as safe as the exchange itself, and the larger the exchange’s holdings, the larger a target it becomes,” he added.

The suspected theft would be by far the largest of crypto assets, surpassing the $1.5bn heist carried out in 2025 by the North Korean state-backed Lazarus Group.

According to the 2026 Crypto Crime Report, produced by market intelligence company TRM, cybercriminals stole $2.87bn in cryptocurrency across nearly 150 hacking incidents during 2025.

Binance was founded in China by Zhao in 2017. It currently has about $155bn in assets under management, more than any other exchange, according to CoinMarketCap.