Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, said late Thursday that $6.3 billion in user funds had been affected by an attacker in what appears to be by far the largest theft of digital currencies in history.
The company, which allows users to trade cryptocurrencies and other digital assets, said around $3 billion had been frozen by various partners so far. Binance said on social media that its initial investigation suggested that an attacker had compromised an engineer’s laptop, enabling unauthorized withdrawals.
The incident set off a chain reaction in the crypto industry Thursday as companies raced to secure their assets.
Executives for the cryptocurrencies Tether and Circle said they had frozen more than $1.57 billion and $800 million, respectively. Unlike bitcoin, a famously volatile asset, Tether and Circle are stablecoins, a term for cryptocurrencies that are pegged to a stable asset like the U.S. dollar.
World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm whose co-founders include members of the Trump family, said it had frozen $27 million in relation to the apparent hack.
Binance has not yet said who it believes was responsible. But TRM Labs and Pangolin Intelligence, two cybersecurity threat analysis companies, late Thursday attributed the incident to the North Korean-backed hacker group TraderTraitor.
“These funds go toward weapons proliferation and other destabilizing activity, which makes this a major national security issue, not just a crypto theft,” Ari Redbord, TRM’s global head of policy, said in an email.
“But alongside the largest hack in history, we also saw the largest response in history, with Tether, Circle and others freezing about 40% of the stolen funds within hours,” he added. “This hack is extraordinary on some many levels — both the scale and the response.”
Binance said it had suspended deposits and withdrawals and that it would cover users’ losses by drawing from its existing funds and a $1 billion bitcoin rainy-day fund.
“Our teams are working around the clock to resolve this issue safely and thoroughly. We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice,” the company said.
As news of the losses spread through social media, the company’s founder and former CEO, Changpeng Zhao, noted early the firm appeared to have been hacked.
“It does look like a hack on Binance,” he said on social media Thursday.
Zhao stepped down as CEO in 2023 after pleading guilty in the United States to violating criminal anti-money-laundering guidelines. (He was later pardoned by President Donald Trump.) He remains the company’s largest shareholder.
The incident is by far the largest theft of cryptocurrency in history.
Hacking has troubled cryptocurrency exchanges for years. Unlike in the traditional banking system, cryptocurrency trades on a decentralized network called a blockchain that allows funds to move quickly and anonymously — making breaches difficult to trace.
TraderTraitor has been blamed for other previously record-setting crypto hacks. It was responsible for a $1.5 billion theft from the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit in 2025, according to the FBI, and before that stole $600 million from a cryptocurrency-based video game.
Binance says its average daily trading volume is about $95 billion, making it the largest crypto trading platform in the world. Its U.S. version, Binance.US, said it was not affected.
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