Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Thursday that it had halted withdrawals after it was attacked by hackers who made off with more than $6 billion in digital coins, in what appears to be the biggest crypto heist in history.
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The attack appeared to be the work of “North Korea’s elite hacking unit,” according to TRM Labs, a crypto research firm. The firm had “high confidence” in its assessment, it said, based on features of the hack that resembled previous thefts. TRM Labs estimated that the hackers had shifted about $2.4 billion in crypto coins “beyond any issuer’s reach.”
Binance initially believed that the attackers might have compromised its systems through an engineer’s laptop, leading to unauthorized withdrawals. But on Friday, the company said it had found “additional points of breach,” calling the attack a “complex hack.”
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Binance added on Friday that it had started to recover some of the stolen crypto assets as well as set aside billions of dollars to cover customers’ losses. It said it was on track to allow customers to withdraw money from their accounts within two days.
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News of the security breach caused chaos in the crypto industry, which has faced a string of damaging cyberattacks over the years. In February 2025, Bybit, one of Binance’s top rivals, lost $1.5 billion to North Korean hackers — the largest crypto heist at the time. The Binance attack appears poised to top it.
The price of Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency, dropped below $80,000 for the first time in more than a month. Crypto-linked stocks also took a hit on Friday: the U.S. exchange Coinbase fell more than 11 percent; the brokerage Robinhood shed nearly 8 percent; and Strategy, a company that buys and sells enormous amounts of Bitcoin, dropped 10 percent in early trading.
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Binance plays a crucial role in the crypto industry. It is the world’s largest marketplace for digital coins, a platform that customers use to swap traditional currencies for Bitcoin, Ether and other types of crypto.
But like many crypto exchanges, it also operates as something akin to a bank. Customers store their holdings on Binance, relying on the exchange to keep their funds safe.
As news of the apparent theft spread on Thursday, Binance’s industry peers rushed to its aid. Tether, a major crypto platform, said it had frozen more than $1.5 billion in crypto related to “a potential Binance hack.” Circle, another crypto firm, said it had frozen more than $800 million “associated with the incident.”
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And there has absolutely never been another exchange that played a crucial role in the crypto industry before Binance. Nope. Can't think of any.