$6.3 billion Binance hack is largest crypto theft on record

• Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the company froze more than 800 million in USD Coin associated with the incident.
• Bitcoin slid more than 3% and traded below $80,000.

In this article

• CRCL

Follow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTCircle signage during the company's initial public offering in front of the New York Stock Exchange, June 5, 2025.Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Several crypto firms, including Circle Internet Group and Tether, on Thursday froze $2.54 billion of funds tied to a potential hack on cryptocurrency exchange Binance.

The world's largest crypto exchange by daily trading volumes didn't explicitly confirm that it has suffered an exploit.

"Our teams are aware of reports of a potential security issue and are actively investigating," a Binance spokesperson said. "Rest assured that user funds are completely safe." Binance also said on X that Binance Alpha trading had been temporarily suspended, and that "the current verified total frozen is $2.54 billion."

Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao said in a post on X that user funds were safe and that he expected all customer funds to be fully covered. Zhao, who no longer runs the exchange, also said the incident appeared to be a hack.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said Thursday evening in a social media post that the company had frozen more than 800 million in USD Coin associated with the incident. USDT stablecoin issuer Tether CEO Paolo Ardoinoalso said in on X that his firm had frozen more than 1.5 billion of its stablecoin that may have been related to a potential breach.

Later, Binance co-founder Yi He said in a statement that the XRP and RLUSD-tied firm Ripple helped halt the movement of $200 million of funds linked to the possible attack.

But those frozen funds could represent only a fraction of the ones impacted. Crypto data provider Arkham Intelligence linked nearly $6 billion in digital assets — including bitcoin, ether, solana and various stablecoins — to 55 wallet addresses it has linked to the potential exploit.

Arkham identifies, tracks and flags crypto wallets by analyzing publicly available blockchain data. It also solicits tips from its community members.

Exploits are not uncommon in the crypto space. In 2025, Bybit suffered roughly $1.5 billion in losses due to a hack. More recently, Bitget lost more than $350 million worth of digital assets in a cyber theft incident. Over the past several years, bad actors have also drained billions of dollars in crypto from decentralized exchanges.

Bitcoin — the most widely followed cryptocurrency in the world — slid more than 3% following the executives' statements, breaking below $80,000. Ether fell nearly 4%, while solana shed about 3%.

Shares of Circle also tumbled about 5% in after-hours trading on Thursday.

Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.