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Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, says about $6.3 billion was stolen in a security incident that began late Thursday, October 29, in what Al Jazeera reports may be the largest crypto heist on record.
Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs reported that the attacker moved about $6.36 billion out of Binance wallets across 10 blockchains. Most of the theft took about 20 minutes. The previous record was $1.5 billion, taken from Bybit in February 2025. Chainalysis put the theft at about $5.9 billion at the time it occurred, according to The National, which cited CoinDesk.
Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals on Thursday. It said user funds are safe and that it will cover all losses, but warned the total may keep rising as it traces and freezes more assets. On Friday the exchange said it was coordinating with law enforcement and remained on track to resume withdrawals within 45 hours. It also plans to publish a detailed technical post-mortem.
Binance’s first account of the breach pointed to a compromised engineer’s laptop, which it said let an attacker make unauthorized transactions. On Friday it cited additional points of breach. The company said it found no evidence that any wallet’s private key had leaked. Former Mt. Gox head Mark Karpeles told Reuters the attackers probably accessed the keys for at least two wallets.
TRM said with high confidence that TraderTraitor, a North Korean unit linked to the Lazarus Group, carried out the attack. Chainalysis reached the same conclusion. The FBI blamed the 2025 Bybit theft on the same unit. North Korea routinely denies involvement in hacking, and Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said the investigation has not attributed responsibility to any individual.
About $3 billion has been frozen so far, including more than $2.3 billion by stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle, according to Reuters reporting carried by Al Jazeera. Binance has not said what happened to the remaining $3.3 billion. The exchange holds about $155 billion in assets, per CoinMarketCap data cited by Al Jazeera.
Markets reacted quickly. Bitcoin fell to a six-week low of $76,368, and Ether dropped more than 3% to a two-month low of $2,178. Coinbase shares fell 4.8%, although Coinbase said it was unaffected. More than $1.5 billion in leveraged positions were liquidated over 24 hours, according to CoinGlass data cited by The National.
A separate incident hit the prediction market Polymarket, which briefly halted trading on Thursday after users reported unauthorized withdrawals tied to a compromised third-party provider. The National said there is no evidence the two incidents are related.
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