Binance hit by major hack as billions in crypto funds are frozen - Euronews.com

The company – the world's largest crypto exchange by daily trading volumes – posted a series of sometimes contradictory messages on X, insisting that "user funds are completely safe" but also saying it would "cover all losses". The company later said on its X account for Latin America that "the total estimated impact is around $6.3bn (€5.5bn)".

At about 0030 GMT on Friday, Binance said all deposits and withdrawals had been "temporarily suspended while our team conducts security checks, freezes funds and works with law enforcement".

Investigation details

Binance's statement on X said an initial investigation suggested the hack involved a compromised laptop belonging to a "DevOps engineer", allowing unauthorized access to a "service container" and execution of withdrawal transactions. "We have found no evidence of any private key leaks from wallets," the company added.

Industry response

Paolo Ardoino, the boss of Tether, said his firm had frozen about $1.6bn "related to a potential Binance exchange hack". Jeremy Allaire, who runs cryptocurrency platform Circle, said his company had frozen more than $800m in USDC. Both USDT and USDC are "stablecoins" linked to the US dollar.

The US Department of Justice and the FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment. For several hours before Binance confirmed the attack, industry observers had reported that hackers had managed to reach the platform.

Market impact

The prices of most major cryptocurrencies fell following news of the cyberattack, with the exception of stablecoins. At about 0400 GMT, bitcoin and Ethereum were down 0.8%, recovering after plunging by nearly 5% and 6%, respectively. BNB, Binance's native cryptocurrency, was up 2.7% after tumbling nearly 10%.