Binance said on Thursday it had frozen $3 billion in crypto assets while it investigates a potential security breach. The stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle froze related assets.

Reports of the company's statements put the estimated impact at about $6.3 billion. Binance has not set a final loss figure, and its co-founder Yi He said the exchange would cover all hacking losses.

What is confirmed

  • Binance said it froze $3 billion and that the amount could rise as it works with law enforcement, token issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners to trace and freeze more assets.
  • Tether froze nearly $1.57 billion and Circle more than $800 million, according to reports. Yi He said Ripple froze roughly $200 million.
  • Binance said it is running security checks, will resume withdrawals once the issue is resolved, and that user funds remain safe. It temporarily suspended trading on its Binance Alpha platform as a precaution.
  • Binance.US and Coinbase said they were not affected.
  • Reports of Binance's statement say it gave no update on the remaining roughly $3.3 billion of the $6.3 billion estimate.

Who said what

  • Yi He, Binance co-founder: "Binance will cover all hacking losses," without giving details.
  • Changpeng Zhao, the co-founder who no longer runs Binance, said in a post on X that the incident looked like a hack.
  • Miguel Morel, chief executive of the blockchain intelligence firm Arkham, said data indicated billions of dollars appeared to have been hacked by an unknown actor. He said the cause was not confirmed, that it began around 4:30pm US Eastern time and appeared to be ongoing.
  • Bernardo Brites, chief executive of Trace Finance: "It's becoming very hard to counter hacks as AI can find vulnerabilities faster than you can fix them."
  • Jack McDonald, senior vice-president of stablecoins at Ripple, said the company was monitoring the reports and freezing affected funds.
  • The analytics firm Chainalysis said the incident could be the largest crypto heist on record.
  • One account of Binance's early findings says an attacker may have compromised an engineer's laptop, reached an internal system and submitted unauthorised withdrawals, and that there was no evidence private keys leaked. This is preliminary and we have not confirmed it.

Markets and context

In early Asian trading on Friday, bitcoin was down about 2% at a six-week low of $77,646 and ether was down about 2% at a two-month low of $2,238.76. BNB, Binance's token, fell more than 8% over 24 hours to $694, according to CoinGecko data. Coinbase shares fell 4.8% and Strategy nearly 6% in extended US trading.

The analytics firm TRM Labs estimated that attackers stole $2.9 billion across nearly 150 attacks in 2025. Binance reported more than 335 million registered users and about $160 billion in assets under custody in its 2024 annual report.