Many MindedBinance reports record $6.3bn theft, with analysts pointing to North Korea
Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange by size, has reported a hack in which about $6.3bn was accessed. If confirmed at that scale, it would be a record theft. The previous record was the $1.5bn Bybit heist in 2025. Binance says it has frozen or secured about $3bn of the stolen assets. Many of the rest remain with unidentified hackers.
The cause has shifted as the investigation has gone on. Binance first suspected a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, then said investigators had found further points of breach. Co-CEO Richard Teng said more than one person was involved and that the attackers used a self-destruct mechanism that wiped their tools and traces. Chainalysis says it has high confidence in a North Korean link. TRM Labs said several elements resembled earlier North Korean incidents, including Bybit. North Korea has always denied state-sponsored crypto theft, and the attribution rests on analytics firms' assessments, not a confirmed official finding.
For security, this is a setback. A theft of this size from an exchange that is estimated to have over 300 million registered users, and that said in 2024 it held over $160bn in custody, raises the cost of trusting digital financial infrastructure. Those costs fall on users, in the form of more verification, more insurance and less confidence. Binance says users' money is safe and that it will cover every loss. It has set aside over $6.34bn in company funds. Experts warn that pledge may not be legally binding, and recovery would depend on contract terms and where Binance can be sued. Commentators have compared the reassurances to those made before FTX collapsed in 2022.
Watch the US Secret Service and FBI tracing efforts, and whether Binance's reserves actually cover customers. Markets reacted: Bitcoin fell 5% to about $76,800 on Friday, and Coinbase and Robinhood shares also dropped.
Source: BBC World