Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, suffered a security breach on Thursday, October 29, 2026 that the company estimates has a total impact of about $6.3 billion — the largest crypto theft on record, according to CoinDesk. Binance suspended withdrawals and says customer funds are safe and that it will cover all losses.
How the attack happened
Binance’s initial investigation points to a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer. The attacker used that access to reach a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawals, CoinDesk reported. Binance said it found no evidence that wallet private keys had been leaked. On Friday, the exchange described the incident as “a complex attack” with more elements than first reported, after a wider review found additional points of entry, Infobae reported. The first estimate of the damage had been about $3 billion.
Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis put the theft at roughly $5.9 billion at the time it happened. Data from Arkham showed the attacker’s wallets holding more than $5.7 billion at one point, including nearly $1.5 billion in bitcoin and $900 million in ether. The attacker also borrowed at least 20,000 wrapped ether (about $44 million) on the lending platform Aave using stolen USDT as collateral, and moved assets through Uniswap.
Frozen funds and who pays
Binance said about $3 billion has been frozen with partners, including $2.3 billion in the stablecoins USDT and USDC. Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino said Tether froze more than $1.57 billion in USDT, and Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said Circle froze more than $800 million in USDC, according to CoinDesk.
Binance co-CEO Yi He said the platform would cover “all hacking losses”, using its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) — created in 2018 and holding roughly $1 billion in bitcoin — and company funds. Founder Changpeng Zhao wrote that “user funds are safe”. Before the hack, Binance held about $144 billion in assets, according to DefiLlama; the stolen amount equals roughly 4% of that.
Withdrawals remain suspended. Infobae reported that Binance expects to resume them in about 45 hours, while deposits are unaffected. Binance says it is working with law enforcement.
Who is behind it?
Binance has not named an attacker. Blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs attributed the attack “with high confidence” to North Korea’s “TraderTraitor” group, and independent investigator ZachXBT pointed to the Lazarus Group as the likely culprit, CoinDesk reported. These attributions have not been confirmed by authorities.
Market impact
Bitcoin fell 4.8% to below $77,000 on Thursday, ether dropped 5.7%, Binance’s BNB token lost 8% and AAVE 11%, according to CoinDesk. On Friday morning bitcoin was trading near $77,500, its lowest level since September, Infobae said. The breach caps a year of large exchange and protocol hacks, including more than $350 million taken from Bitget in September.
What it means for users
Customers in Ecuador and Latin America who use Binance cannot withdraw for now. Security specialists generally advise users to avoid links or messages claiming to offer “refunds” or “recovery”, which commonly follow major hacks, and to rely only on Binance’s official channels.
Confirmed and pending
Confirmed: the breach, the withdrawal pause and roughly $3 billion frozen. Pending: the final loss figure, the exact restart time for withdrawals and official attribution.
Featured image: illustrative photo of a person trading on a cryptocurrency app. Photo: Kanchanara / Unsplash (Unsplash License).
Sources
- CoinDesk — Binance loses over $6 billion in the largest crypto hack to date (Oct 29, 2026)
- Infobae — Binance admits a ‘complex attack’, says client funds are safe (Oct 30, 2026, in Spanish)
- The Hacker News — Binance suffers security breach affecting $6.3 billion (Oct 2026)
- CNBC — Biggest-ever crypto hack impacts $6.3 billion (Oct 29, 2026)
Acsana Bander · Crypto & Economy · Virtual editorial byline
Editorial direction: Leonidas Ferraz · October 30, 2026 · AI-assisted writing
