Binance Reports a $6.3 Billion Security Breach and Freezes About $3 Billion as Bitcoin Hits a Six-Week Low

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, said a security incident had an estimated impact of $6.3 billion, an amount analysts said could make it the biggest theft in the industry's history. The exchange said on Friday, October 30, 2026, that about $3 billion of the affected assets had been frozen so far and pledged to cover all user losses, CNBC reported.

Binance halted withdrawals while it investigated, Reuters reported, and said it expects to resume them within 48 hours. According to Reuters, the bulk of the theft unfolded in around 20 minutes beginning late on Thursday.

What Binance has said

An initial investigation suggests "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 exchange said, according to CNBC. In a later update, Binance said further work had "uncovered additional points of breach," without giving details, and that it remained on track to resume withdrawals in 45 hours, the BBC reported. Binance co-founder Yi He said deposits were unaffected and continued to operate normally.

"Your money is safe and we're covering every loss," co-CEO Richard Teng said on X, according to Reuters. "Our investigation has not attributed responsibility to any individual."

Binance has 335 million registered users and held about $162.8 billion in assets under custody as of its 2025 annual report, Reuters reported. The exchange runs a $1 billion user-protection reserve held entirely in bitcoin.

Stablecoin issuers freeze funds

About half of the stolen assets were quickly frozen by stablecoin issuers, according to Reuters:

• Tether said it had frozen nearly $1.57 billion in assets linked to the incident.
• Circle froze more than $800 million.
• World Liberty Financial worked with custodian BitGo to freeze funds; Yi He said $27 million in stablecoins and about $2 million worth of World Liberty tokens had been frozen.
• Ripple froze roughly $200 million, according to Yi He.

Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis said that as of 8:30 p.m. ET on Thursday it had confirmed at least $5.912 billion was stolen, with funds moving across multiple blockchains including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Tron and Ripple, Reuters reported.

Attribution

TRM Labs and Chainalysis both said they were highly confident North Korea was responsible, Reuters reported. TRM said the attackers were able to order wallets that Binance uses to empty into hacker-controlled wallets, mirroring the 2025 theft at exchange Bybit, which the FBI attributed to Pyongyang. North Korea routinely denies involvement in such attacks, and its diplomatic missions did not immediately respond to Reuters' requests for comment.

The Binance incident is larger than the roughly $1.5 billion stolen from Bybit in 2025. In September, exchange Bitget said roughly $350 million in crypto had been stolen from its platform. Last year, attackers stole $2.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency across nearly 150 attacks, according to TRM Labs researchers.

Market reaction

Bitcoin fell to a six-week low of $76,368 and ether dropped to a two-month low of $2,178 before markets stabilized, according to Reuters. BNB, the token originally launched as Binance Coin, was down 5% over 24 hours at $709.70, citing CoinGecko data. Hyperliquid's HYPE token rose 9% to $92.67 against the broader decline, CNBC reported.

As of about 7:05 a.m. ET, bitcoin traded near $77,596, ether near $2,243 and BNB near $701, according to Yahoo Finance data.

Market liquidity was also affected. "The average bid/ask spread on spot bitcoin was five times wider than normal earlier this morning, and 2.5 times for ether. Spreads have since narrowed slightly," Aravind Srinivasan of market maker GSR said, according to Reuters. Geoffrey Kendrick, head of digital assets research at Standard Chartered, said: "Only after assets are unfrozen and more detail of the hack emerges will we find a new base."

Shares of Coinbase Global, which said it was unaffected, slid 4.8% and Strategy fell nearly 6% in extended trading on Thursday, Reuters reported. In Friday premarket trading as of about 7:05 a.m. ET, Coinbase was about 5% below Thursday's close and Strategy about 6% lower, according to Yahoo Finance data.