World’s largest crypto exchange Binance halts withdrawals amid suspected $4.2b hack

The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has frozen approximately $4.2 billion in assets as it responds to a security incident with an estimated total impact of around $8.9 billion.

In a social media post, Binance said an initial investigation suggests the incident involved a “compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which allowed an attacker to access a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions”.

Binance stated it found no evidence of any wallet private key leak.

“Our teams are working around the clock to resolve this issue safely and thoroughly,” Binance said in the statement posted to X.

It said it revoked the compromised address’s permissions and engaged law enforcement and blockchain analysts to identify the attackers and track down the stolen assets.

In the statement, it assured that “user funds are safe”.

“Rest assured that user funds are completely safe,” a Binance spokesperson had said earlier on Friday, with the exchange confirming it will “cover all losses” using its SAFU fund and company funds.

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Binance also stated it will publish an updated Proof of Reserves and a detailed technical post-mortem once investigations are complete.

As an immediate precaution, the exchange temporarily suspended all deposits and withdrawals while security checks are conducted.

The market impact of the incident, which could be the largest-ever crypto heist according to analytics firm Chainalysis, was felt immediately in early Asian trading on Friday.

Bitcoin fell about two per cent to a six-week low of $110,385 ($USD77,646), and Ethereum also fell about two per cent to a two-month low of $3182.75 ($USD2238.76).

BNB, a token originally launched as Binance Coin that can be used to pay Binance fees, was down more than eight per cent over the past 24 hours at $986 ($USD694), according to market aggregator CoinGecko.

Crypto exchange Coinbase Global slid 4.8 per cent while those of bitcoin buyer Strategy fell nearly six per cent in extended US trading.

Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the company, said earlier in a post on X that the incident “looked like a hack”.

The platform, which allows users to buy, sell and trade digital assets, has more than 335 million registered users globally and had about $227 billion ($USD160 billion) in assets under custody as of the exchange’s 2024 annual report.

Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, who in 2023 pleaded guilty to a felony related to his failure to prevent money laundering on the platform and stepped down as chief executive.

US President Donald Trump pardoned him in 2025.

- With Reuters