On Thursday, Binance confirmed a major security breach involving roughly $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency assets, with initial reviews pointing to an engineer compromised laptop that enabled unauthorized withdrawals on the global platform.
This massive scale makes the incident the largest crypto hack in history, surpassing the prior record of $1.5 billion stolen from the Bybit exchange in 2025, an event also connected to North Korean hackers.
With assistance from other platforms, Binance has frozen roughly half of the stolen funds and pledged to reimburse all impacted users, though withdrawals remain offline until security is verified.
The breach impacts only Binance.com, leaving Binance.US and Coinbase completely unaffected by the security incident.
Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao, known as CZ, verified the hack publicly on X by stating it looks like a hack, though co-chief executive Yi He now manages the public response since Zhao only stays as a key shareholder.
Investigation firm TRM Labs identified the culprit as TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking unit, expressing high confidence due to matching elements with past incidents like the 2025 Bybit hack.
TRM Labs chief policy officer Ari Redbord described the event as a watershed moment and noted that recovering the massive remaining balance of stolen assets will take time.
Other crypto companies assisted in the response, as Tether froze about $1.6 billion in USDT, Circle froze over $800 million in USDC, and World Liberty Financial also helped freeze funds.
Cryptocurrency markets dropped quickly on the news, with Bitcoin falling more than 4 percent alongside sharp declines for Ethereum and Solana.
Many Pakistanis trade on Binance, but the company pledge to cover losses protects account holders, while Pakistan local compliance layers are influenced by recent PVARA listings under the Anti-Money Laundering Act.
