Binance says $6.3bn stolen in biggest crypto heist in history

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has said that about $6.3bn in funds have been stolen in a “security incident” that looks to be the biggest crypto heist in history.

The world’s largest crypto exchange said on Thursday that it had suspended all deposits and withdrawals and that about $3bn in funds had been frozen following the apparent hacking.

Binance said an initial investigation suggested that a hacker had been able to make unauthorised transactions after gaining access to an engineer’s compromised laptop.

The company said it would cover all losses, adding that user funds were “safe”.

“Our teams are working around the clock to resolve this issue safely and thoroughly,” Binance said in a statement to Al Jazeera.

“We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice.”

The company added that it would share a “detailed” technical post-mortem once investigations were complete.

Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s founder and largest shareholder, said earlier that the exchange appeared to have been hacked.

TRM, a blockchain intelligence firm, said in a report that it assessed with “high confidence” that the attack was carried out by North Korea’s hacking unit TraderTraitor, which investigators have linked to the Lazarus Group.

Ari Redbord, TRM’s global head of policy, described the attack as “unprecedented” and a “watershed”.

“When North Korea steals at this scale, the money funds weapons proliferation and other destabilising activity. That makes this a global security issue, not just a crypto theft,” Redbord told Al Jazeera.

The price of Bitcoin, the world’s most popular cryptocurrency, fell about 5 percent following the heist, dropping below $77,000.

“Binance is one of the largest centralised exchanges, and so a blow to confidence in them risks shocking confidence to many retail investors, which could dampen prices of crypto assets,” Sean Foley, an expert in crypto markets at Macquarie University in Sydney, told Al Jazeera.

Foley said the attack highlighted the risks of centralised exchanges and could spur more traders to use decentralised alternatives.

“Any assets held at a centralised exchange are only as safe as the exchange itself, and the larger the exchange’s holdings, the larger a target it becomes,” Foley said.

The Binance hacking dwarfs the previous record for a crypto theft, set in 2025 when North Korean state-backed Lazarus Group carried out a $1.5bn heist on Bybit.

Cybercriminals stole $2.87bn in crypto assets in nearly 150 hacking incidents in 2025, according to the 2026 Crypto Crime Report produced by TRM.

Binance, founded in China by Zhao in 2017, has about $155bn in assets under management, more than any other exchange, according to CoinMarketCap.