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Binance Halts Withdrawals After Reported $6.3bn Hack

Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange by volume, has suspended deposits and withdrawals after a security incident it estimates at $6.3bn, as BNB and bitcoin fell sharply and customer funds stayed locked for now.

Binance said on Thursday evening that a security incident drained about $6.3bn of assets from its wallets, the largest crypto theft on record, according to CoinDesk. The $6.3bn is Binance’s estimate; blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis puts it near $5.9bn.

The exchange suspended deposits and withdrawals and has given no date for them to resume. For UK traders, money held on Binance is locked until its security checks finish.

BNB, the token of Binance’s own blockchain, closed yesterday at 697.69, down 8.04% from 758.67 on Wednesday, after an hourly low of 679.00 in the 8pm hour. At 7.21am today it was 713.04, still 6.0% below Wednesday’s close.

Bitcoin fell 4.30% on Thursday to 77,775.11. Hot US inflation data and weak risk appetite also looked to be weighing on markets, so the hack was probably not the only pressure.

Binance’s preliminary finding points to a staff laptop rather than a stolen wallet key.

Binance’s initial investigation suggests that 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. We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak.

Binance

Binance has not named an attacker. Security firms say North Korea’s Lazarus Group is the likely culprit, and Ido Ben-Natan, co-founder and CEO of security firm Blockaid, said the tactics were consistent with North Korean operations.

Binance said about $3bn of the assets are frozen. Stablecoin issuers, whose dollar-pegged tokens can be blocked, said Tether had frozen over $1.57bn of USDT and Circle over $800m of USDC.

Co-CEO Yi He posted on X that Binance would cover all hacking losses, and Binance says user funds are safe. That is a pledge, not a payment made. Its SAFU emergency fund holds roughly $1bn in bitcoin, well short of the sum involved.

Line chart of the BNB price in dollars from 22 to 29 October 2026, showing a sharp fall on Thursday evening.
BNB daily closes, 22 to 29 October 2026, with the first market reaction on Thursday evening.

The attacker is reportedly moving funds through Uniswap, a decentralised exchange, and has borrowed at least 20,000 WETH, about $44m, from lending platform Aave using stolen USDT as collateral.

Asktraders News Team
Asktraders News Team
Team Member

The AskTraders Analyst Team features experts in technical and fundamental analysis, as well as traders specializing in stocks, forex, and cryptocurrency.

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