The Binance Hack Becomes the Biggest Crypto Heist in History at $6.3 Billion

Keypoints:

• Hackers stole about $6.3 billion from Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange
• The theft is more than four times the previous record of $1.5 billion from Bybit in 2025
• Outside firms blame North Korea's TraderTraitor group, but Binance has not named a culprit
• Wallets on 10 blockchains were emptied in about 20 minutes
• Binance says user funds are safe and that it will cover all losses

The world's biggest crypto exchange has been hit by the biggest crypto theft ever. Binance said hackers stole around $6.3 billion from its wallets on the night of October 29 and 30.

The speed was shocking. Attackers drained wallets across 10 different blockchains in roughly 20 minutes. Security firms say the preparation began at least 36 hours before, including the use of a mixing service to fund the hackers' own wallets. That makes this theft more than four times bigger than the previous record, the $1.5 billion stolen from the exchange Bybit in February 2025.

Several blockchain investigators, including TRM Labs, Elliptic and Chainalysis, blame North Korean state backed hackers, a group known as TraderTraitor. They say some of the stolen money ended up in the same wallet used in an earlier attack on the exchange Bitget. Binance itself has not named anyone. It first said the breach may have started with a hacked laptop belonging to an engineer, but later said it had found additional points of breach.

Binance suspended all deposits and withdrawals while it investigates. The company says user funds are safe and that it will cover every loss. Its executive Yi He said it had set aside more than $6.34 billion of company money to replace the affected assets. That is far more than the $1 billion emergency fund, called SAFU, that the exchange built in 2018. Reports say about $3 billion of the stolen funds has already been frozen. An analyst at Fundstrat said the hack does not currently look like a major threat to Binance's survival.

The hunt now is a race against time. Investigators say hackers often move stolen money through many addresses and rely on professional laundering networks to turn it into cash, which makes recovery hard. Binance is working with law enforcement and blockchain tracing firms to freeze more.

The theft also hit crypto at a tricky moment. Digital assets were already under pressure from higher interest rates and weaker demand from exchange-traded fund buyers.