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<\/p>\nThe world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange is investigating an apparent multibillion-dollar hack, with US$3 billion ($5.3 billion) of crypto assets already frozen and estimates suggesting the amount stolen could be substantially larger.<\/p>\n
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, initially said US$2.54 billion in crypto assets had been frozen as it investigated a potential security breach, with stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether among those freezing related assets.<\/p>\n
That figure has now risen to US$3 billion, while crypto-tracking firm Chainalysis estimates US$5.912 billion was stolen at the time of the suspected hack. Binance has not yet confirmed the total amount stolen.<\/p>\n
Binance co-founder Yi He said the exchange would “cover all hacking losses”.<\/p>\n
Much of the cryptocurrency successfully frozen is in US-dollar stablecoins, including Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC, which are designed to maintain a one-to-one value with the US dollar.<\/p>\n
Tether has frozen nearly US$1.57 billion of assets linked to the incident, while Circle has frozen more than US$800 million.<\/p>\n
Binance said the amount frozen could increase as it worked with law enforcement agencies, token issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and other industry partners to trace and freeze additional assets.<\/p>\n
Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the company, said in a post on X that the incident “looked like a hack”.<\/p>\n
World Liberty Financial, a crypto company linked to US President Donald Trump and his family, was also among the organisations involved in efforts to freeze assets.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Trump-linked company World Liberty Financial was involved in efforts to freeze assets.<\/p>\n
Getty via AFP<\/p>\n
Binance said it was conducting security checks and would resume withdrawals once the issue was fully resolved, adding that user funds remained safe.<\/p>\n
The exchange also temporarily suspended trading on its Binance Alpha platform as a precaution.<\/p>\n
If the Chainalysis estimate is confirmed, the attack would be the largest cryptocurrency theft on record, at nearly four times the roughly US$1.5 billion stolen from Bybit in 2025.<\/p>\n
Cybercriminals stole about US$2.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency across nearly 150 attacks in 2025, according to crypto intelligence firm TRM Labs.<\/p>\n
Binance, which allows users to buy, sell and trade digital assets, has more than 300 million registered users globally and about US$160 billion in assets under custody.<\/p>\n
Rival exchange Coinbase said it was unaffected and was monitoring the situation.<\/p>\n
Unlike cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, centralised stablecoins such as USDT and USDC can be frozen by their issuers.<\/p>\n
Tether and Circle can blacklist particular blockchain addresses, preventing the stablecoins held in those addresses from being transferred.<\/p>\n
The security breach has also hit cryptocurrency markets.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin has fallen by 6.0 percent in the last 24 hours to a six-week low of around US$76,500 in early Asian trading on Friday, while Ether fell about 9.0 percent in the last 24 hours to around US$2200.<\/p>\n
Binance’s BNB token was down more than 8 percent over 24 hours.<\/p>\n
– Reuters, with additional reporting from RNZ<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange is investigating an apparent multibillion-dollar hack, with US$3 billion ($5.3 billion) of crypto…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":645712,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[138,111,139,69],"class_list":["post-645711","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645711","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=645711"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/645711\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/645712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=645711"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=645711"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=645711"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}