Crypto
Binance Halted Withdrawals After a $6.3B Security Breach
Binance suspended withdrawals late Thursday after a security incident it estimated affected about $6.3 billion of assets, roughly $3 billion of which has been frozen. Bitcoin fell below $78,000 and BNB lost as much as 8%.
The world's largest crypto exchange stopped customers from taking money out late on Thursday, October 29. Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals after what it called a security incident; deposits were working normally again by Friday, but withdrawals stayed on hold while its team rebuilt the security of the withdrawal system and the addresses linked to it. The exchange estimated the total impact at about $6.3 billion. Coinglass data cited by Investing.com put the drained assets at about $1.66 billion of USDT, 17,985 bitcoin worth about $1.45 billion and $767 million of USDC, plus ether and smaller tokens; BNB balances were untouched.
If those figures hold, it is the largest crypto theft on record, more than four times the roughly $1.5 billion taken from Bybit in February 2025. Binance's initial investigation pointed to a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, which let an attacker reach a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawals; it said it had found no evidence that any wallet private key had leaked. It has not named a culprit, although security experts quoted by FX News Group pointed to North Korean hackers. Binance.US said it was not affected.
The response moved quickly on chain. Binance said it had frozen about $3 billion of the affected funds with blockchain partners, the Financial Times reported. Circle froze more than $800 million of USDC and Tether more than $1.5 billion of USDT linked to the incident, a reminder that the two largest stablecoins can be blocked by their issuers at an address level. Binance said customer holdings were unaffected and that it would cover all losses from its SAFU emergency fund and its own money, and promised a detailed post-mortem and an updated proof of reserves.
Prices fell across the market. Bitcoin had traded above $80,000 for most of Thursday; on Binance it lost 2.47% in the 20:00 UTC hour and reached $76,500 at 02:00 UTC on Friday, its lowest in about six weeks, before steadying near $78,600. Coinglass recorded about $350 million of long positions liquidated in four hours. BNB fell as much as 8% and traded 4.8% lower at $716.10 early on Friday, and ether lost 3.3% to $2,237. Bitcoin was on course for a monthly loss of about 6%.
For customers the practical lesson is the one every exchange failure repeats: coins held on a platform are a claim on that platform until they can be withdrawn. Binance has the reserves to make good on its promise, which was not true of FTX in 2022, and the freezes may recover a large part of the loss. Until withdrawals reopen, though, users cannot move funds to sell elsewhere or to self-custody, and the price of that delay is set by a market that keeps trading in the meantime.