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HACKERS have stolen more than £4.7 billion from crypto giant Binance in what has been called “the biggest bank heist in mankind”.
A North Korean cyber gang is believed to be the most likely culprit after the funds were looted in about 15 minutes, causing chaos in the market.
The world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platform said that about half of the assets were frozenbut that many remain in the hands of cybercrooks.
Binance insisted that its “user funds are completely safe” in a series of posts on X, but also added that it would “cover all losses”.
The company later said the total estimated impact is around $6.3bn (£4.7bn).
“We have been working with blockchain partners to freeze the affected assets, with ~$3bn (£2.5bn) frozen on-chain so far,” it added.
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Deposits and withdrawals have meanwhile been suspended for customers while the team “conducts security checks, freezes funds and works with Law enforcement.”
Initial checks suggest that an engineer’s laptop was compromised, allowing the attack to make unauthorized withdrawals, Binance said.
The theft would dwarf the previous largest cyber attack, when $1.5 billion (£1.1 billion) was taken from the Bybit platform in February 2025.
At the time, the heist was attributed to a group of hackers linked to North Korea called TraderTraitor.
Blockchain investigation Company TRM Labs said Thursday that it has “high confidence” that the Binance hack was also orchestrated by TraderTraitor, citing “robust on- and off-chain intelligence.”
TRM said: “Different Functions of this attack match previous North Korea-related heists.
TraderTraitor is believed to be part of the Lazarus Group – which gained notoriety in 2014 when it was accused of hacking into Sony Pictures in retaliation for The Interview, a film mocking Kim Jong Un.
Binance said the figure of frozen funds is increasing as it works with law enforcement, issuers, blockchain intelligence companies and industry partners to trace them.
It added that it “found no evidence of private key leakage from wallets” after the theft was linked to a compromised laptop belonging to an engineer.
Paolo Ardoino, the head of Tether – a company that issues a cryptocurrency known as USDT – said his company had frozen around $1.6bn (£1.2bn) “related to a potential Binance exchange hack.”
Jeremy Allaire, who runs cryptocurrency platform Circle, said his company had frozen more than $800 million (£596 million) in USDC.
USDT and USDC are both “stablecoins”, or digital currencies whose value is tied to a traditional currency, the US dollar.
For a few hours before Binance confirmed the attack, industry observers said that hackers had managed to reach the platform.
The prices of most major cryptocurrencies have dropped News of the cyber attack, except for the stablecoins, which by definition can only fluctuate within tight margins.
From 4 o’clock, Bitcoin and Ethereum were down 0.8 percent, recovering from dips of nearly five percent and nearly six percent respectively.
BNB, native to Binance, was up 2.7 percent after falling nearly 10 percent.
The attack on Binance comes as many observers express concern that the ever-expanding capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) Models could compromise cryptography and IT security protocols.
