Binance Hack: $6.3B Stolen in Record Crypto Heist

The Binance hack is now the biggest crypto theft ever recorded, with roughly six point three billion dollars pulled out of the world's largest exchange in a single evening. According to BBC News, Binance says it has frozen about half of the stolen funds, while many assets remain in the hands of unidentified hackers.

What Happened on Thursday Night

Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs says an attacker moved about six point three six billion dollars out of Binance wallets across ten blockchains, most of it in around twenty minutes starting at 20:05 UTC on October 29. That is roughly four times the one point five billion dollar Bybit hack of February 2025, which until now held the record, according to BleepingComputer.

Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals while it investigated. Later on Friday it clarified that deposits were unaffected and said withdrawals were on track to resume within a set timeline.

How the Hackers Got In

Binance first said the breach may have started with a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, which let an attacker reach a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions. The exchange said it had found no evidence of a leaked wallet private key.

That story has since grown more complicated. Co-CEO Richard Teng said the attacker did not simply use one engineer's permissions, and that the incident was not a single one-click action. He added that the investigation had uncovered additional points of breach, and that the hackers used a self-destruct mechanism to wipe tooling and traces as they went, per the BBC.

North Korea Is the Prime Suspect

Several security firms point the finger at TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking unit tied to the Bybit theft. TRM Labs attributes the attack to the group with high confidence, and Elliptic says some of the stolen funds reached an address linked to the suspected North Korean exploit of Bitget last month.

Chainalysis reports that the attacker swapped three hundred twenty-five million dollars in stablecoins for about two hundred eighty-five million dollars in ETH in nearly twenty minutes, a way to stay ahead of freezes. Its analysts also see signs of automated laundering, with thousands of transactions. No government has confirmed the attribution yet, and North Korea has denied involvement in past hacks.

Frozen Funds and the Cleanup

Elliptic has verified about two point eight four billion dollars as frozen, around forty-four percent of the theft, almost all of it in the stablecoins USDT and USDC that issuers can lock. The rest is being swapped into assets like ETH that cannot be frozen, and moved between blockchains.

Binance says it will cover all losses from its SAFU emergency fund and company money, and that user funds are safe. It also promised a detailed technical post-mortem once the facts are verified, plus an updated Proof of Reserves after remediation, according to its own security announcement.

What Happens to the Market Next

Crypto prices wobbled as news of the Binance hack spread, and Bloomberg reported that the exchange's founder Changpeng Zhao had flagged the activity as a likely hack early on. Traders are now watching whether other exchanges tighten signing rules, and whether stablecoin issuers keep freezing addresses quickly enough to matter.

Regulators will almost certainly ask hard questions too. A breach this large at a platform that serves millions of people lands squarely in the middle of the global debate over how crypto firms should secure customer money. Read more on world headlines as governments respond to the Binance hack.

Why Gen Z Traders Should Care

If you keep coins on an exchange, this is the nightmare scenario: a giant platform, a pile of hot wallets, and a state-backed crew that spent months preparing. Binance says customers are covered, but the episode shows how much trust sits inside a few companies.

The lesson many analysts draw is simple. Exchanges are targets, and speed matters, since most of the money left in under half an hour. Following the latest crypto news on how the recovery goes will tell us whether freezing stablecoins is a real defense or only a partial one.

For now, the facts are still moving. The total could change, attribution is not official, and Binance has not yet published its full post-mortem. What is clear is that the Binance hack has reset the scale of what a crypto heist can look like.