Binance disclosed on Thursday that it had been the target of a massive cyberattack, which the exchange and others have described as the largest ever recorded in the crypto industry. The company said it froze more than $2.5 billion, roughly €2.25 billion, to prevent the improper withdrawal of funds.
Binance confirmed the breach around 23:30 on Thursday, several hours after security experts had already been reporting that hackers had penetrated the platform. The exchange suspended transactions on certain products as it moved to contain the damage, but insisted that customer-deposited funds remained "totally safe."
Changpeng Zhao, the former chief executive of Binance who remains the group's majority shareholder despite no longer holding an operational role, acknowledged the incident directly. "This appears to be a cyberattack on Binance," he said.
Axios points to North Korea, far larger sums
Axios reported that trading on the exchange was suspended after hackers allegedly linked to North Korea stole more than $6 billion, a figure well above the amount Binance itself has acknowledged as frozen. Axios placed the attack within a broader pattern it has labelled "Black October," a month marked by a wave of high-level cyberattacks, data breaches and AI-discovered security flaws that has stoked fears of a wider global security crisis.
If confirmed, the scale of the Binance incident would exceed the $1.5 billion stolen from the Bybit exchange in February 2025, an attack also attributed to hackers linked to North Korea and previously regarded as the industry's most severe breach.
Stablecoin issuers move to freeze funds
The response extended beyond Binance itself. The chief executive of Tether, issuer of the USDT stablecoin, announced the freezing of approximately $1.6 billion in assets "in connection with a possible attack." USDT is the third-largest digital currency by circulating volume, with roughly $180 billion in circulation, and its value is pegged to the US dollar, as is typical of stablecoins.
Jeremy Allaire, chief executive of Circle, which issues the rival USDC stablecoin, indicated that about $800 million had been blocked. Allaire said the measure had been taken in coordination with authorities.
Bitcoin slides on the news
Bitcoin reacted sharply to the news. Around 23:35 on Thursday it was down 3.41%, trading at $78,492. By Friday morning, at around 7:45 Lisbon time, the cryptocurrency had pared some losses but remained down 2.08%, at $78,114.10, as markets continued to digest the scale of the breach and the uncertainty over how much has ultimately been recovered or remains exposed.
