Binance hit by $6.3B hack, the largest in cryptocurrency history

This article contains our initial reporting on the Binance hack. Follow Cointelegraph’s live coverage for the latest developments.

Update (Oct. 30, 2026 at 12:00 UTC): The headline and article have been updated with Binance’s confirmation of the record $6.3 billion hack, its pledge to cover all losses and the freezing of about $3 billion in affected assets.

Binance confirmed Friday that it had suffered a hack affecting about $6.3 billion in assets, the largest cryptocurrency theft on record.

The exchange said it had worked with blockchain partners to freeze about $3 billion in affected assets and pledged to cover all losses using its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and company funds.

The theft was about four times the size of the $1.5 billion Bybit hack in February 2025, which previously held the record, according to TRM Labs.

Concerns were first raised by blockchain researcher Spreek, who posted on X that assets from a Binance-linked Ethereum wallet had been transferred to a newly created address through a contract call allegedly funded by Tornado Cash. Spreek later reported that wallets connected to the transfers had begun selling Tether USDt (USDT) through decentralized exchanges.

Later Thursday, Arkham Intelligence identified a collection of wallets labeled “binance-hacker-1029” holding approximately $5.84 billion in digital assets. The figure represented the wallets’ reported holdings rather than a confirmed estimate of stolen funds.

Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao said the activity appeared to be a hack. He said Tether and Circle had frozen approximately $971 million and $823 million, respectively. Zhao said he expected all user funds to be fully covered.

Source: Arkham Intelligence

Tether, Circle freeze over $2.36 billion

Blockchain security firm Blockaid said in an intial assessment Thursday that its team had identified roughly $3.3 billion in suspicious transfers involving Binance-linked wallets across Ethereum, Arbitrum and Avalanche.

Shortly after news of the hack emerged, Tether and Circle, the two largest stablecoin issuers by market capitalization, said they had frozen more than $2.36 billion in tokens linked to the hack.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the company had frozen more than $800 million in USDC in coordination with law enforcement and would continue supporting the investigation.

A few minutes later, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company had frozen more than $1.567 billion in USDT linked to the hack.

“Protecting the industry and our partners is our main priority,” Ardoino wrote.

Source: Paolo Ardoino

The Binance hack came hours after Polymarket temporarily halted trading following a compromise at a third-party provider. The prediction market platform said it had fixed the issue and pledged to reimburse affected users, with all systems reported operational by 7:05 p.m. UTC Thursday.