Binance Halts Withdrawals After Suspected Multibillion-Dollar Hack
Billions leave hot wallets in overnight transfers
Exchange confirms incident and suspends deposits and withdrawals
Binance first said it was investigating reports of a potential security issue, then referred to "the security issue" as fact and suspended all deposits and withdrawals. In posts on X, the company said its team was conducting security checks, freezing funds and working with law enforcement, adding that services would resume only after the issue was fully resolved. Binance said user funds were safe and that it would cover all losses, a pledge repeated by co-CEO Yi He. Binance later said verified frozen assets had reached about $3 billion and warned the figure could keep rising. An earlier Bloomberg Law report put frozen assets at $2.54 billion, showing how fast the tally moved.
Stablecoin issuers freeze funds tied to the incident
Major stablecoin issuers moved quickly to block the stolen funds. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company froze more than $1.5 billion in USDT linked to the incident. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said it froze more than $800 million in USDC. Together those two freezes exceeded $2.3 billion, forming most of the frozen total. Other freezes included roughly $200 million by Ripple, about $30.5 million by the Arbitrum Security Council, and about $27 million in USD1. According to Yahoo Finance and Decrypt, Tether froze 975.1 million USDT and Circle froze 823 million USDC in the main receiving wallet, totaling about $1.8 billion in that wallet alone.
