Circular signage during the company’s initial public offering in front of the New York Stock Exchange, June 5, 2025.Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesBinance said on Friday that a security incident had an estimated impact of $6.3 billion, with around $3 billion in cryptocurrency assets frozen so far, and pledged to cover all losses. The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange said that an initial investigation suggests that “the security incident may involve a DevOps engineer’s laptop being compromised, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions.” Binance co-founder Yi He said deposits were not affected and continued to operate normally, while the exchange was working on improvements to its withdrawal service and related address controls. It hopes to begin resuming pickup services within the next 48 hours. The exchange said it would cover all losses using its User Safe Asset Fund and company funds, adding that customer funds remained safe. Binance also temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals, revoked the authorization of the affected address, and enlisted law enforcement and blockchain intelligence firms to track and recover the funds. The company said it would release a technical report and updated Proof of Reserves following remediation efforts. “We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak. We will share a detailed technical autopsy once the investigation is complete and the facts are fully verified,” Binance said. The announcement followed moves by several cryptocurrency companies, including Circle Internet Group, Tether and Ripple, to freeze funds linked to the hack. Circle shares fell about 5% in after-hours trading on Thursday. “Our teams are aware of reports of a potential security issue and are actively investigating,” said a Binance spokesperson. “Rest assured, user funds are completely safe.” Binance also said on X that Binance Alpha trading had been temporarily suspended and that “the currently verified total frozen is $2.54 billion.” USDT stablecoin, Paolo Ardoino, also said on dollars in funds linked to the possible attack. But those frozen funds could represent only a portion of those affected. Crypto data provider Arkham Intelligence linked nearly $6 billion in digital assets, including bitcoin, ether, solana and several stablecoins, to 55 wallet addresses it has linked to the possible exploit. Arkham identifies, tracks and flags crypto wallets by analyzing publicly available blockchain data. It is also asking its community members for tips. Crypto. In 2025, Bybit suffered approximately $1.5 billion in losses due to a hack. More recently, Bitget lost over $350 million in digital assets in a cyber theft incident. In recent years, bad actors have also drained billions of dollars worth of cryptocurrencies from decentralized exchanges.
