Photo: Bxalber / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has suspended every deposit and withdrawal on its platform while it investigates what it calls a “potential security issue”, and says crypto assets worth about $3 billion linked to the incident have now been frozen. The exchange began flagging the problem late on Thursday, US time, and its founder Changpeng Zhao said soon afterwards that it did “look like a hack”.
What Binance has said so far
In a series of posts on its official channels, Binance said its security teams were reviewing the situation urgently, that it was working with law enforcement, and that the freeze on deposits and withdrawals was a precaution while it carried out security checks and traced funds. It has repeatedly told customers that their money is safe and has promised to cover any losses itself.
Binance will cover all losses.
Binance, in a statement on X
The exchange has not explicitly confirmed that funds were stolen, and the size of any loss is still unclear. It has said it will publish a full post-mortem once the investigation is over. Binance also paused some trading features linked to customers’ spot wallets and warned users to watch out for scammers sending fake links or asking for account details.
Stablecoin issuers step in
Two of the biggest stablecoin companies moved quickly to lock up tokens connected to the incident. Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino said his company had frozen more than $1.5 billion, while Circle co-founder Jeremy Allaire said Circle had frozen more than $800 million in coordination with law enforcement. Zhao, who stepped down as Binance chief executive in 2023 but remains its largest shareholder, thanked both firms for acting fast and said he expected all user funds to be fully covered.
Markets rattled
The scare sent crypto prices lower. Bitcoin fell more than 3 per cent on Thursday evening to below $79,000 and later slipped under $77,000, according to market reports, with other digital tokens also losing ground.
Why it matters
Binance holds about $155 billion in assets, more than any other exchange, according to the data site CoinMarketCap, and a halt on withdrawals there leaves its customers worldwide unable to move money in or out for now. If a theft is confirmed, it would be the largest crypto heist ever recorded, surpassing the roughly $1.5 billion taken in 2025 in an attack attributed to North Korea’s state-backed Lazarus Group. Hackers stole about $2.87 billion in crypto across nearly 150 incidents in 2025, according to the blockchain analytics firm TRM.
Founded by Zhao in 2017, the exchange has faced heavy regulatory scrutiny in recent years, and in 2023 it and Zhao pleaded guilty to US charges in a settlement worth about $4 billion.
What happens next
Deposits and withdrawals will stay suspended until Binance finishes its security checks, and the company has not given a timeline for restoring them. Investigators will try to trace where the affected funds went, and the promised post-mortem should reveal how the breach happened and how much, if anything, was actually lost.
