Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, is dealing with what looks like the biggest crypto theft ever recorded. Roughly $3 billion of the money tied to the incident has been frozen so far, according to the company’s latest update. Binance has not said how much was actually taken.
What Happened
On Thursday afternoon, observers noticed a huge amount of crypto moving out of Binance wallets to an outside account, with more than $2.7 billion in the first wave across Ethereum and stablecoins from Tether and Circle.
Binance’s official X account acknowledged a “potential security issue” at 12:15 AM local time and paused all deposits and withdrawals. It later suspended trading on Binance Alpha, its platform for early-stage crypto projects.
As the night went on, outside analysts, including a senior director at Coinbase, said the outflow had reached about $5.8 billion across Ethereum, Bitcoin and Tron, and that it was still going. Binance has not confirmed a figure for the loss.
How the Money Got Out
The funds appear to have come from Binance’s hot wallets. These are crypto wallets that stay connected to the internet so an exchange can process withdrawals and trades quickly.
The tradeoff is that anything online is easier to attack than money kept in offline “cold” storage. Binance has not explained how the attacker got in.
The Freeze
Crypto theft usually ends with the thief keeping everything. This time the stablecoin companies fought back. Stablecoins like Tether’s USDT and Circle’s USDC are tied to the US dollar, and their issuers can lock specific wallets so the coins cannot be spent.
Tether froze more than $1.5 billion and Circle froze more than $800 million, the latter in coordination with law enforcement. Binance’s verified frozen total started at $2.54 billion and has since climbed to about $3 billion.
The company says it is working with law enforcement, token issuers and blockchain tracing firms to find and freeze more.
Bitcoin and Ether cannot be frozen this way, so the stolen coins of that kind are harder to stop.
Binance says user funds are safe. Co-CEO Yi He said withdrawals will stay off until the systems are confirmed secure, and hinted that an emergency fund exists to cover users if losses hit them.
Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s founder, stepped down as CEO in 2023 after pleading guilty to money laundering violations and was pardoned by President Trump in 2025.
He wrote that it “does look like a hack” and that, as a shareholder, he expects users to be made whole. Binance has also warned users to ignore unofficial links and messages asking for account details, since scammers tend to show up during moments like this.
The Damage so Far
Bitcoin slipped about 3% to just under $79,000. Ether fell roughly 3.6% to about $2,275, and Binance’s own BNB token dropped nearly 7% to about $704.
The US arm, Binance.us, says it is a separate platform and is operating normally. Coinbase says it is not affected.
If the early numbers hold up, this would top the 2025 Bybit hack, when North Korean-linked hackers known as Lazarus stole about $1.5 billion.
A Separate Breach at Polymarket
The same night, prediction market Polymarket had its own incident, which appears unrelated. About 700 users had funds drained, roughly $2.7 million in total.
Polymarket said a third-party provider was compromised and promised to make affected users whole.
Security firm Hudson Rock identified the provider as DebugBear, a website performance tool, and said its code was tampered with to find logged-in traders, sell their positions and move the proceeds out.
DebugBear has confirmed an ongoing security incident and told customers to remove its code from their sites.
Withdrawals on Binance remain paused until the company says otherwise.
