Binance has suffered a major security incident that impacted roughly $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency assets. The world’s largest crypto exchange confirmed the hack on Thursday. Furthermore, early checks suggest an engineer’s compromised laptop allowed the attacker to make unauthorized withdrawals.
The scale makes this the largest crypto hack in history. Specifically, it eclipses the previous record of $1.5 billion from the Bybit exchange hack in 2025. In addition, that earlier incident was also linked to North Korean hackers.
Binance says it has already frozen about half of the stolen assets with help from other platforms. The company promised to cover all losses for affected users. However, it has disabled withdrawals until it confirms the environment is secure.
The hack only affects Binance.com, which serves the global market. Binance.US, the smaller platform for American residents, remains completely unaffected. Furthermore, Coinbase has also confirmed its platform saw no impact from the incident.
Changpeng Zhao, the former Binance CEO known as CZ, publicly confirmed the hack on X. He said that it does look like a hack. However, Zhao no longer runs the company and only remains a key shareholder. Instead, co-chief executive Yi He is leading Binance’s public response.
Investigation firm TRM Labs has pointed to a specific attacker. Specifically, TRM attributed the hack to TraderTraitor, a known North Korean hacking unit. Furthermore, the firm says it has made this judgment with high confidence. TRM also noted that several elements match earlier North Korean attacks, including the Bybit hack from 2025.
Ari Redbord, chief policy officer at TRM Labs, called the Binance hack a watershed moment. In addition, he said the attacker still holds an enormous sum of stolen assets. As a result, tracing and recovery efforts remain far from over.
Other crypto giants have also stepped in to help. For example, Tether froze around $1.6 billion in USDT linked to the hack. Furthermore, Circle froze more than $800 million in USDC. World Liberty Financial, the crypto company linked to US President Donald Trump and his family, also helped freeze stolen funds.
Markets reacted sharply to the news. Bitcoin dropped more than 4% following the alerts. In addition, Ethereum and Solana also fell significantly on the day.
Many Pakistanis trade on Binance for both local and international crypto needs. However, Binance’s promise to cover all losses should protect Pakistani account holders. Furthermore, the recent PVARA listing under Pakistan’s Anti-Money Laundering Act (AMLA) adds new local compliance layers for Pakistani exchanges.
