Binance said on 29 October that it had suffered the largest cryptocurrency theft on record, with an estimated total impact of about $6.3 billion. According to NBC News, the previous record was the $1.5 billion stolen from the exchange Bybit by North Korean hackers in February 2025. Binance said the attack began with a compromised laptop, through which the attacker reached a service container and submitted unauthorised withdrawals. The exchange has paused deposits and withdrawals while it works with law enforcement, and says about $3 billion in crypto tied to the hackers’ wallets has been identified and frozen. Bitcoin fell about 4.3% and Ethereum about 4.6% as the news spread.
The case that the response has worked rests on speed and on Binance’s promise to pay. CoinDesk reports that Tether froze more than $1.56 billion in USDT and Circle blocked about $823 million in USDC, with Ripple and World Liberty Financial also freezing assets, and that the issuers acted within hours of the theft. Binance has set aside more than $6.34 billion of its own reserves to cover customer losses, said it will “cover all losses” and that “User funds are safe”, and its founder Changpeng Zhao said he expects all user funds to be fully covered. Blockchain investigators have linked the attack to North Korean actors, according to CoinDesk. Supporters of the freezes argue that stopping the stolen funds from moving quickly limits what the thieves can cash out.
The case against begins with the point that a freeze is not a recovery. CoinDesk quotes experts who say a freeze stops funds from moving but does not return them, because returning money requires establishing ownership and a legal basis, possibly through court orders in several countries. The attacker split about $1.4 billion in stolen bitcoin across 19 wallets, and bitcoin has no central issuer, so it cannot be frozen at the network level. There is also a fairness question. Anton Golub, a former exchange executive who supports the freezes, noted that smaller victims have faced court orders and legal restrictions, and he pointed to a roughly $290 million hack in April in which Circle was criticised for not freezing stolen USDC. Frank Hepworth of New Market Trading said a mistaken freeze could expose issuers to liability. NBC adds that money held in an exchange account is not automatically insured like a bank deposit, so any refund depends on the exchange.
The hack matters because Binance is among the largest crypto exchanges, and its pause on withdrawals affects customers who keep funds there. It also tests the new power that stablecoin issuers have shown, since the ability to freeze stolen tokens within hours changes how thieves can profit. Binance warned that the total could rise as it traces and freezes more assets, which means the figures remain provisional. The attack also raises the question of how well exchanges can protect themselves from a single compromised laptop, which is how this one began.
Binance has promised to make customers whole and the issuers have frozen a large share of what was taken. What remains unsettled is how much can be recovered, who decides when to freeze, and whether smaller victims will ever get the same treatment.
