Binance loses billions, probably through an engineer's laptop, and halts all transactions
The world's largest crypto exchange puts the haul at 6.3 billion dollars and says it has already frozen roughly half of it.
Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency trading platform, has been hit by a cyberattack in which, by the company's own estimate, some 6.3 billion dollars was taken, VRT NWS reports. Binance said on X that a hacker may have gained access to the laptop of one of its engineers and used it to carry out unauthorised transactions. The company suspended all transactions on the platform and says it has already frozen about 3 billion dollars of the stolen amount. Customers who lost money will be fully reimbursed from SAFU, an emergency fund run by Binance.
The communication did not go smoothly. In an initial response to TechCrunch, Binance insisted that user funds were completely safe, while users were already reporting money flowing out of the exchange's wallets. Founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the company but is its largest shareholder, had already written on X that Binance had likely been hacked. According to TechCrunch, payments company Circle froze about 800 million dollars and Tether about 1.56 billion dollars linked to the attack. Who is behind the attack has not yet been officially established.
If the figure is confirmed, it would be the largest theft of cryptocurrency to date. The previous record dates from 2025, when North Korean hackers stole nearly one and a half billion dollars from the Bybit exchange. When the news broke, several cryptocurrencies lost significant value, bitcoin among them, La Libre reports. The market now appears to be stabilising somewhat, according to VRT NWS.