By Radarr Africa Business Desk
LAGOS, October 31 (Radarr Africa) – Cryptocurrency exchange Binance said on Thursday, October 29, that a security incident had an estimated total impact of about $6.3 billion, with about $3 billion of affected assets already frozen, in what blockchain analysts describe as the largest crypto theft on record.
Binance temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals as a precaution and pledged to cover customer losses, Fox Business reported. A Binance spokesperson said user funds remain safe and that security teams were securing wallet infrastructure and tracing affected assets with law enforcement and industry partners.
The exchange said it would pay for losses from its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and company funds, and would publish an updated Proof of Reserves once the incident is resolved. It has also promised a technical account once investigators establish the facts, according to a CCN report republished on Yahoo Finance.
Binance said its preliminary findings point to a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer, which may have let an attacker reach a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions. It said it found no evidence that wallet private keys were compromised and revoked the affected address authorisation. Fox Business noted that Binance has not officially described the incident as a hack.
CCN reported that attackers drained wallets across 10 blockchains, with most transfers taking place within about 20 minutes. TRM Labs estimated the loss at $6.36 billion. On Ethereum, the attacker used a feature known as EIP-7702, which lets a wallet delegate operations to smart contract code. A batch of 50 previously signed authorisations allowed a malicious contract to take control of a Binance hot wallet, the report said. TRM said activity across chains suggested a broader compromise of Binance’s signing infrastructure, a path Binance has not confirmed.
TRM Labs and Chainalysis attributed the operation to North Korea’s TraderTraitor hacking group, according to CCN, which said investigators had previously linked the same group to the $1.5 billion Bybit theft in February 2025.
Aravind Srinivasan of market maker GSR told Reuters it was “the biggest hack in history,” Fox Business reported. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer manages the exchange, wrote on X that it “does look like a hack on Binance.” He thanked Tether and Circle for freezing assets. At the time of his post Tether had frozen about $971 million and Circle about $823 million. Reuters later reported that Tether had frozen nearly $1.57 billion and Circle more than $800 million. Ripple froze roughly $200 million of potentially affected funds. Binance co-founder Yi He said on X that withdrawals were disabled while security teams secured the platform.
CCN said World Liberty Financial also froze assets and that Arbitrum’s Security Council intervened on its network. It put the frozen amount at about $2.7 billion as of 00:30 UTC on October 30, per TRM, against Binance’s figure of about $3 billion. The report said the gap reflects different snapshots. The attacker swapped some stablecoins for bitcoin and ether, which limits issuers’ ability to block further transfers, though investigators can still trace the assets. TRM policy chief Ari Redbord said recovery needs a separate legal process that could include court orders and coordination with token issuers.
Markets reacted. Reuters, cited by Fox Business, reported that bitcoin fell about 2% to a six-week low of $77,646 in early Asian trading on Friday, ether fell about 2% to $2,238.76, and BNB fell more than 8% over 24 hours to $694, according to CoinGecko. CCN gave later figures, with bitcoin down more than 3% to $76,368, ether down more than 3% to $2,178 and BNB down about 5%. Coinbase and Strategy shares fell in extended US trading, and Binance.US and Coinbase said their platforms were unaffected.
Fundstrat’s Sean Farrell told CNBC the breach did not currently appear to pose a significant solvency threat, partly because of frozen assets being recovered and Binance’s ability to absorb remaining losses, CCN reported. The open questions listed were when withdrawals will resume, how much will be recovered and whether the promised reimbursement is delivered.
