Binance Suspends Withdrawals After Hackers Steal About $6.3 Billion From Platform: 23 outlets compared - NewsCord

Binance announced it faced an estimated total impact of about $6.3 billion after hackers stole from its platform in what is being called the record crypto heist. The exchange temporarily suspended all withdrawals as it worked to contain the damage. The company said around $3 billion of affected assets, mainly stablecoins, had been frozen.

Elliptic analysts reported that the attacker had converted approximately $3.3 billion into digital assets that could not be frozen and was working to convert those into traditional currency. Binance stated it had "already reserved over $6.34 billion of company funds to cover this incident," with $5 billion of those funds "already held in the exact token assets that were impacted."

North Korean connections

Investigations have linked the hack to a North Korean unit known as TraderTraitor. Peter Ward of the Sejong Institute in Seoul noted that North Korea had "near-total protection to its hackers." The US Secret Service confirmed it was "working around the clock" "to identify, freeze, trace, and recover" stolen funds, coordinating with the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.

Sophisticated attack methods

Binance co-CEO Richard Teng revealed the incident was not carried out by one person, describing how the hackers used "a self-destruct mechanism that destroyed tooling and traces as they went, making it more difficult for us to trace and investigate." Initially, Binance believed an engineer's laptop had been compromised, but later uncovered additional points of breach.

Market impact and recovery efforts

The hack significantly affected cryptocurrency markets, with Binance Coin (BNB) falling about 7% to below $700 before partially recovering, Bitcoin dropping below $77,000, and Ethereum declining by about 4%. Binance said it was actively buying more tokens to cover the remaining amount after reserving over $6.34 billion, warning that "This step can take longer because some tokens may have low liquidity." The exchange expects withdrawal services to resume by Sunday morning.

Other stablecoin issuers also took action. Tether's CEO Paolo Ardoino announced his company froze about $1.6 billion "related to the possible exploitation of the Binance exchange," while Circle's CEO Jeremy Allaire said his company froze about $800 million of USD Coin (USDC). Binance assured users "your money is safe, and we're covering every loss" despite the massive breach.