Binance said a security breach had an estimated impact of $6.3 billion, and that it will cover the losses from its user protection fund and company money. Reuters called it the biggest crypto theft on record. About $3 billion of the affected assets has been frozen. The exchange did not spell out the status of the other $3.3 billion. Co-CEO Richard Teng wrote on X: "Your money is safe and we're covering every loss." The first notice, posted Thursday, paused deposits and withdrawals. By Friday Binance said deposits were unaffected and that withdrawals should return within 48 hours. Bitcoin's drop to $76,368 is in today's market lead.
Stablecoin issuers froze the part they can stop
Tether said it froze nearly $1.57 billion linked to the incident. Circle froze more than $800 million. The BBC put the two freezes together at about $2.4 billion. Co-founder Yi He said Ripple froze about $200 million, and that World Liberty Financial, working with custodian BitGo, froze $27 million in stablecoins and about $2 million of its own tokens. Jack McDonald, Ripple's senior vice president of stablecoins, said the firm was freezing affected RLUSD. Binance's first read is that a DevOps engineer's laptop was compromised, letting an attacker reach a service container and send unauthorized withdrawals. The exchange said it had found no evidence of a wallet private-key leak. Mark Karpeles, the former Mt. Gox chief, told Reuters he thought keys for at least two wallets were reached. Those two accounts of the entry point are not the same, and Binance said it has not blamed any person.
A freeze is not the same as money returned
TRM Labs and Chainalysis both said they were highly confident the attackers were a North Korean state hacking unit. TRM said wallets on 10 blockchains were emptied, most of it in about 20 minutes, in a pattern like the 2025 Bybit theft that the FBI attributed to Pyongyang. North Korea's mission in Geneva and its embassy in China did not answer Reuters. Binance has 335 million registered users and reported about $162.8 billion in custody in its 2025 annual report. Its Secure Asset Fund for Users is a $1 billion bitcoin reserve. That reserve is smaller than the unfrozen remainder, which is why the cover pledge also uses company funds. Ari Redbord of TRM Labs told CNBC that a freeze stops a transfer, and that getting coins back still needs a legal process. Stablecoins can be frozen, burned and reissued by the company that issues them. Bitcoin and ether cannot. Chainalysis researcher Eric Jardine said there is no standard clock, and that returning funds can take months or years. Readers chasing a refund pitch should start with the recovery desk, not a cold caller. More company coverage is on the business desk.