Cryptocurrency giant Binance said on Thursday that it has frozen digital assets worth around $3bn (\u00a32.24bn) to prevent them from being stolen while it investigates a security issue.<\/p>\n
The company said as part of a series of alerts online that all deposits and withdrawals are temporarily suspended while its teams conduct security checks and that the firm will “cover all losses”. <\/p>\n
Two other major crypto platforms, Tether and Circle, said they have also frozen a total of about $2.4bn of assets in response to the potential Binance hack.<\/p>\n
Binance has not said how much has potentially been stolen but some crypto experts have put the figure at well above $5bn.<\/p>\n
The security incident concerns Binance.com, while much smaller crypto platform Binance.US which provides trading services specifically for American residents, said its platform is not affected by the issue.<\/p>\n
“It does look like a hack,” Binance’s former boss Changpeng Zhao said on X.<\/p>\n
Zhao no longer manages the firm but remains a key shareholder.<\/p>\n
Glassnode, a digital asset advisory firm, estimated the hack concerns a total of $5.3bn in crypto.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, New York-based blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis estimated that more than $5.9bn has been stolen.<\/p>\n
That amount is nearly four times the value of crypto stolen from Dubai-based crypto exchange Bybit in 2025 – a record-breaking incident that has been attributed to hackers linked to North Korea.<\/p>\n
Binance said the amount of funds frozen may continue to increase as its teams work closely with law enforcement and other partners to trace and seize additional assets.<\/p>\n
“We are working around the clock and will share a full post-mortem once the investigation is complete. Please rely only on official Binance channels for updates,” the firm said, adding that users’ funds are safe.<\/p>\n
Binance is the world’s largest crypto exchange by daily trading volumes.<\/p>\n
Bitcoin dropped by around 5% following the alerts. The price of other major cryptocurrencies including Ethereum and Solana also fell sharply.<\/p>\n
Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire said his firm is “closely tracking reports of a potential exploit involving Binance” and that his company has frozen more than $800m in assets linked to the incident. <\/p>\n
Circle is the issuer and co-creator of the USDC, one of the world’s largest US dollar-backed cryptocurrencies.<\/p>\n
Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said his firm has frozen around $1.6bn “related to a potential Binance exchange hack.”<\/p>\n
“Protecting the industry and our partners is our main priority,” said Ardoino, whose company issues a cryptocurrency known as USDT.<\/p>\n
Several crypto industry observers had flagged concerns about a potential hack on Binance hours before the exchange confirmed the security issue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cryptocurrency giant Binance said on Thursday that it has frozen digital assets worth around $3bn (\u00a32.24bn) to prevent…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":818178,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-818177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=818177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/818177\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/818178"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=818177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=818177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=818177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}