Binance suspends withdrawals after $6.3bn hack
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has suspended deposits and withdrawals after a security breach that it estimates affected about $6.3 billion in assets. It could be the biggest crypto heist on record.
The exchange said on Friday that its initial investigation points to a compromised laptop belonging to one of its DevOps engineers. The attacker is believed to have used it to reach a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawals.
“We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak,” Binance said in a statement.
The exchange has frozen about $3 billion of the affected assets on-chain with the help of blockchain partners. The status of the remaining $3.3 billion is unclear.
Stablecoin issuer Tether froze about $1.57 billion, Circle more than $800 million and Ripple about $200 million, Reuters reported.
Binance has said users will not bear the losses. “User funds are safe,” the exchange said, adding that it will cover losses from its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and company funds.
Co-founder and co-chief executive Yi He said the SAFU fund is held entirely in bitcoin. She said withdrawals will resume “as soon as the security scan is complete”.
The company has not given a timeline for restoring normal operations.
The breach came to light on Thursday, when analysts spotted billions of dollars flowing out of Binance wallets.
Founder and former chief executive Changpeng Zhao, who remains the company’s largest shareholder, posted on X that it “does look like a hack on Binance”.
“It hurts, but we will survive,” Mr Zhao later said, adding that hundreds of employees had worked through the night on the response.
Binance has revoked the affected address authorisation and brought in law enforcement and blockchain intelligence firms to trace and recover the funds. It has not identified the attackers.
The exchange said it will publish a detailed technical post-mortem once its investigation is complete, followed by an updated proof-of-reserves disclosure.
It urged users to rely only on official channels for updates and to beware of scams.
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