The platform promises to cover “all losses”: Binance victim of massive cyberattack, damage estimated at $6.3 billion

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced Thursday that it had been the victim of a major hack with damages estimated at some $6.3 billion, with half of the funds having been frozen to prevent a massive theft. Binance published several contradictory messages on the X platform, first assuring that all funds deposited by customers on its site were “totally safe”, before announcing, a little later, that it would cover “all losses”. The platform then indicated on its X account for Latin America that “the total amount impacted was approximately $6.3 billion.”

“We worked with partners specializing in blockchain to freeze the assets concerned; around $3 billion has been frozen on-chain (blocked on the blockchain, Editor’s note) so far,” the press release added. Consultation with the authorities It would be four times the amount stolen, to date the largest cyberattack of this type: 1.5 billion dollars were siphoned in February 2025 from the Bybit platform, a theft attributed to hackers affiliated with North Korea. Around 12:30 a.m. Friday, Binance announced that “all deposits and withdrawals” were “temporarily suspended.”

“This amount could continue to increase as our teams work closely with authorities, issuers, data analysis companies and industry partners to identify and freeze additional assets” that may have been targeted, Binance added. “This looks like a cyberattack on Binance,” commented on X Changpeng Zhao, former boss of the platform who no longer holds operational functions but still remains a majority shareholder of the group. He estimated that losses linked to this assault could be "a little higher" than a billion dollars.

The boss of Tether, a company issuing in particular a cryptocurrency called USDT, the third digital currency by volume in circulation (approximately $180 billion), announced that it had frozen approximately $1.6 billion of these assets "in connection with a potential attack" on Binance. As for the CEO of Circle, which oversees the USDC cryptocurrency, he announced the immobilization of around $800 million. USDT and USDC are “stablecoins”, that is to say electronic currencies whose value is backed by a traditional currency, in this case the dollar.

Circle boss Jeremy Allaire clarified that this action had been taken in consultation with the authorities. There was no immediate response from the US Department of Justice and the FBI. Cryptocurrencies fall For several hours, before Binance confirmed the attack around 11:30 p.m. GMT on Thursday, several specialists claimed that hackers had entered the platform.

Machine-translated from French