Binance Hit by Record $6.3 Billion Crypto Theft

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, said on October 30 that a breach had affected an estimated $6.3 billion in digital assets, potentially the largest crypto theft on record. Blockchain partners had frozen roughly $3 billion of the assets, the company said.

Binance’s initial investigation pointed to a compromised laptop belonging to a software engineer, which may have let an attacker enter a service container and authorize withdrawals. The company later said its investigation had uncovered additional points of breach. It said it had found no indication that the keys controlling its wallets had been exposed and promised to publish more technical details after its review.

Binance said it would cover all losses. Deposits were unaffected, but withdrawals were suspended during security checks; the company expected them to resume within a day or two. Tether and Circle also said they had frozen funds linked to the incident.

Blockchain intelligence firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking group, with TRM describing its assessment as high-confidence. The firms cited similarities to earlier North Korea-linked thefts. Binance said it was cooperating with police to identify those responsible. North Korea has denied past hacking allegations; the reports provided no definitive proof tying it to this attack.

TRM said about $6.36 billion moved from Binance wallets across ten blockchains, with most of the transfers occurring in roughly 20 minutes. The breach follows the $1.5 billion Bybit theft in 2025, which the FBI attributed to North Korea and TraderTraitor.