Binance hit by largest crypto theft on record: about $6.3 billion stolen, exchange sets aside $6.34 billion to cover losses, about $3 billion frozen

Binance said on October 30 that attackers drained about $6.3 billion from its hot wallets across multiple blockchains late on October 29, with most of the funds moved in a burst lasting only about 20 minutes, making it the largest cryptocurrency theft on record. The exchange said it has set aside more than $6.34 billion in company funds and reserves to restore customer balances, of which about $5 billion is already held in the same tokens that were affected, with the remaining roughly $1.3 billion being bought through market and over-the-counter channels; it warned that thin liquidity and settlement delays could lengthen that process.

How much has been frozen

The $6.34 billion does not include frozen assets. Binance said about $3 billion has been frozen with industry partners: stablecoin issuer Tether froze more than $1.567 billion in USDT, Circle froze more than $800 million in USDC, and Ripple froze roughly $200 million in related funds; the Arbitrum Security Council separately moved 8,426 ETH and 74.6 million ARB, together worth about $30 million, from the attacker's wallet into an interim frozen wallet. The exchange said the frozen total may still rise, but a frozen balance is not money recovered: releasing it requires issuers, law enforcement and in some cases courts, and no timeline has been given.

What the initial investigation found

Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said on October 30 that the initial investigation points to a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which gave the attacker access to a service container used to submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions; the exchange said it found no evidence of a wallet private key leak, and that a detailed technical post-mortem will follow once the facts are fully verified. As a precaution, withdrawals are paused while deposits remain open, with the exchange saying in a notice that it expected withdrawals to resume within about 48 hours; it pledged to cover all losses from its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and company funds, and to publish an updated Proof of Reserves once remediation is complete.

Attribution and market reaction

Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs attributed the attack with high confidence to TraderTraitor, the North Korean unit the FBI blamed for the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025; The Block noted, however, that Binance itself has not attributed the incident to a particular group. The Bybit case was previously the largest crypto theft on record, and this theft is roughly four times its size. Seoul Economic Daily reported that bitcoin fell sharply after the breach and unease spread across the market; this report makes no forecast about future prices.

This report is compiled from CoinDesk, The Block, TradingView and Seoul Economic Daily on October 30, 2026; estimates of the total stolen range from $6.3 billion to $6.36 billion, and this article uses Binance's figure of about $6.3 billion.