Binance hack may trace to one laptop; losses to be covered.
The Binance hack appears to be the largest crypto theft on record. The exchange puts the total impact at about $6.3bn, of which around $3bn has been frozen on-chain, according to a preliminary update on its official X account early on Friday.
The attack began at about 20:24 UTC on Thursday, when funds started draining from a Binance hot wallet on Ethereum. Binance first paused withdrawals on some networks, then suspended all deposits and withdrawals overnight. Trading on Binance Alpha, its early-stage token platform, was also halted.
How the Binance hack happened
Binance said early findings point to a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop. This gave the attacker access to a service container, from which they submitted unauthorised withdrawals. The exchange said it had found no evidence that any wallet private keys had leaked, and has promised a full technical post-mortem. No one has yet been named as responsible.
Customers ‘will be covered’
Co-founder and co-chief executive Yi He said Binance would cover all losses, drawing on its SAFU emergency fund and company money. Founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the exchange, wrote that
“It does look like a hack on Binance.”
Source: X
and said he expected users to be made whole. Binance.US, the separate American platform, says it was not affected.
Billions frozen
The industry moved quickly. Tether froze more than 1.567bn USDT and Circle more than $800m in USDC, while Ripple, World Liberty Financial and the Arbitrum Security Council froze smaller sums.
Even so, on Binance’s own figures, about $3.3bn is still outstanding. At $6.3bn, the Binance hack is roughly four times the size of the $1.5bn theft from Bybit in February 2025, the previous record.
Market reaction
Bitcoin slipped to just under $77,000, its weakest level in more than a month. Ether fell 5.7% and Binance’s BNB token 8.2%. Lending platform Aave froze its markets as a precaution.
What next
There is no date yet for withdrawals to reopen. Binance’s next monthly proof-of-reserves snapshot, due on 1 November, should show whether the stolen assets have been replaced.
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