Cryptocurrency giant Binance said on Thursday that a "security incident" on its platform has impacted about $6.3 billion worth of assets.
The world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange said nearly $3 billion of those assets have been frozen on-chain so far.
Tether and Circle said they have frozen more than 1.567 billion USDT and 800 million related to the incident, respectively. The Arbitrum Security Council is said to have executed a transaction to freeze about $30.5 million from the Binance Exploit.
"Initial investigation suggests that the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions," Binance said in an update.
The company said there is no evidence of a wallet private key leak, adding it will cover all losses from the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) fund and its own funds.
Out of an abundance of caution, Binance has also taken the following steps -
- Temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while security checks are completed
- Revoked the affected address authorization;
- Engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds
"We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice," Binance said.
The development makes it the biggest cryptocurrency heist recorded to date, surpassing the theft of about $1.5 billion from Bybit in February 2025. The incident was subsequently attributed to North Korea.
"Our current estimate on the amount stolen is approximately $5.912 billion at time of theft, nearly 4x the amount stolen in the next largest crypto heist," blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis said in an X post.
(This is a developing story. Please check back for more details.)