Binance loses $6.3 billion in the biggest crypto theft ever

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, says hackers stole about $6.3 billion from its wallets on Thursday, 29 October. If the figure holds, it is the biggest crypto theft on record, more than four times the $1.5 billion taken from the exchange Bybit in 2025.

Blockchain tracing firm TRM Labs put the loss at about $6.36 billion across ten blockchains, most of it moved within roughly 20 minutes. Chainalysis estimates about $6.4 billion.

Binance says the attack began with a compromised laptop belonging to one of its engineers. That gave the attacker access to an internal service, which was used to send withdrawals that had not been authorised. The exchange says it has found no sign that its private keys were leaked, but later said investigators had found additional points of breach.

Both TRM Labs and Chainalysis blame TraderTraitor, a hacking unit they link to North Korea. North Korea routinely denies involvement in hacking.

Binance halted trading and suspended deposits and withdrawals while it ran security checks, and expects withdrawals to resume within about 48 hours. Estimates of how much has been frozen differ: Binance said on Friday that about $5 billion was frozen, while Chainalysis put the figure at about $2.8 billion. Binance says it will cover all customer losses.

Crypto markets fell on the news. Bitcoin dropped more than 3% to around $77,000 on Friday before recovering some ground, and more than $1.6 billion of leveraged trades were forced to close.

Update, 1 November: The FBI has formally blamed North Korea for the theft, naming the TraderTraitor group, which US officials link to the Lazarus Group. It says the stolen assets were converted into Ether and are likely to be laundered. Binance says it has already covered about 90% of the losses from its own funds and is restarting withdrawals in stages.