Binance Puts $6.3 Billion Impact on Security Incident, Freezes $3 Billion

Binance estimated the impact of a security incident at $6.3 billion, with around $3 billion in cryptocurrency assets frozen so far. The exchange said it would cover all losses using its Secure Asset Fund for Users and company funds, while temporarily suspending deposits and withdrawals. Bitcoin fell more than 4% below $78,000 on Friday as concerns over the incident weighed on cryptocurrency markets.

What Binance says happened

Binance said an initial investigation suggests “the security incident may involve a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions.” Co-founder Yi He said deposits remained unaffected and continued to operate normally. The exchange was working on enhancements to its withdrawal service and related address controls and expects to begin resuming withdrawal services within the next 48 hours.

Binance said customer funds remained safe. It temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals, revoked the affected address authorization and enlisted law enforcement and blockchain intelligence firms to trace and recover funds. It said it would publish a technical report and an updated Proof of Reserves after remediation efforts. “We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak. We will share a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is complete and the facts are fully verified,” Binance said.

Binance also said on X that Binance Alpha trading had been temporarily suspended, and that “the current verified total frozen is $2.54 billion.” A Binance spokesperson said: “Our teams are aware of reports of a potential security issue and are actively investigating. Rest assured that user funds are completely safe.”

Stablecoin issuers freeze funds

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said Thursday evening in a social media post that the company had frozen more than 800 million in USD Coin associated with the incident. USDT stablecoin issuer Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino also said on X that his firm had frozen more than 1.5 billion of its stablecoin that may have been related to a potential breach. Jack McDonald, Ripple’s senior vice president of stablecoins, said it was actively freezing affected funds held in RLUSD, its U.S. dollar-backed stablecoin.

Later, Yi He said in a statement that the XRP and RLUSD-tied firm Ripple helped halt the movement of $200 million of funds linked to the possible attack. Shares of Circle tumbled about 5% in after-hours trading on Thursday.

Market and tracing

Bitcoin fell more than 4% to $77,994.96 on Friday as the hack weighed on crypto markets. Crypto data provider Arkham Intelligence linked nearly $6 billion in digital assets, including bitcoin, ether, solana and various stablecoins, to 55 wallet addresses it has linked to the potential exploit.

Exploits are not uncommon in the crypto space. In 2025, Bybit suffered roughly $1.5 billion in losses due to a hack. More recently, Bitget lost more than $350 million worth of digital assets in a cyber theft incident. Over the past several years, bad actors have also drained billions of dollars in crypto from decentralized exchanges.

For Nigerian crypto users, the immediate issue is access. Binance’s temporary suspension of deposits and withdrawals can delay liquidity, while the stablecoin freezes show how quickly issuers can lock funds tied to an incident.