Binance hit by record crypto theft of about $6.3 billion, says it will cover losses

Binance paused withdrawals on Thursday, October 29, after attackers drained billions of dollars in crypto from its wallets. The exchange put the impact at about $6.3 billion in client assets, according to CNBC, which makes it the largest crypto theft on record.

What happened

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, which tracked the transfers, said the theft ran from 20:05 to 23:56 UTC on October 29. TRM Labs said in its analysis that most of the money moved in about 20 minutes and that preparation began at least 36 hours before the theft. TRM counted transfers across 10 blockchains.

Binance paused withdrawals while it investigated. Early reports differed on whether deposits were also affected.

How large was the theft?

The figures depend on who counted and when, because the attackers moved a mix of tokens whose prices kept changing:

Estimate	Amount	Reported by
Binance	about $6.3 billion in client assets	CNBC
TRM Labs	about $6.36 billion across 10 blockchains	TRM Labs
Chainalysis	about $6.4 billion (October 30; an early October 29 estimate was about $5.9 billion)	Chainalysis, CoinDesk
Elliptic	$6.43 billion across 11 blockchains	Elliptic

Any of these numbers is about four times the roughly $1.5 billion stolen from Bybit in February 2025, according to the FBI.

What Binance said

"Rest assured that user funds are completely safe," Binance said in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. The company also said it had "found no evidence of any wallet private key leak," according to CNBC and CoinDesk.

Binance said it would cover the losses, and that about $3 billion of the stolen assets had already been frozen on-chain. Much of that came from stablecoin issuers: Tether and Circle froze more than $2.3 billion in USDT and USDC within hours.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the company, said that "as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered," CoinDesk reported.

Why it matters

Binance is the largest crypto exchange by trading volume, so a withdrawal halt there affects liquidity well beyond its own users. Traders who kept collateral on the exchange could not move it while withdrawals were paused, and the scale of the loss raised immediate questions about how the gap would be filled. Bitcoin fell below $77,000 as the news spread, CoinDesk reported.

What happened after

Binance began reopening withdrawals in phases on November 1. By November 4 it said it had replenished about 98% of the stolen assets, Fortune reported; see Binance resumes withdrawals.

What it could mean for traders

Assets held on an exchange depend on that exchange's security and balance sheet. A pause like this one turns market risk into access risk: positions can still move in price while funds cannot be withdrawn. The markers to follow are the exchange's status page for each network, any reserve figures Binance publishes, and how much of the stolen money stays frozen.

What happens next

Investigators and analytics firms are still tracing the funds. Several firms said the attack bore the hallmarks of North Korea's TraderTraitor group; on October 31 the FBI formally blamed North Korea's TraderTraitor group. North Korea rejected the accusation. Binance's account of how the attackers got in is covered separately.