Binance said on Thursday that $6.3 billion (£4.7 billion) in digital assets has been affected by what has been described as the "largest hack in history." The world's biggest crypto exchange said about half of those assets have been frozen with the help of other platforms, and it said it will "cover all losses."
Binance said early checks show the incident may have involved an engineer's laptop that had been compromised. This allowed an attacker to make unauthorized withdrawals.
Two analytics firms have attributed the incident to a North Korean hacking unit called TraderTraitor. TRM Labs said several elements of the attack resemble earlier North Korean-linked incidents, including the 2025 hack on the Bybit exchange, which involved $1.5 billion. Chainalysis said it has "high confidence" that the North Korean group is linked to the hack. Binance did not directly respond to questions about a North Korean link. It said it is "working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals."
Tether and Circle said they have frozen a combined total of about $2.4 billion in assets in response to the potential hack. Circle said it froze more than $800 million, and Tether said it froze around $1.6 billion. Binance co-chief executive Yi He said withdrawals are disabled until the environment is confirmed to be secure.
Bitcoin fell by more than 4% after the alerts, according to the report. Ethereum and Solana also fell sharply.