Binance suffers largest cryptocurrency theft on record, at US$ 6.3 billion
The exchange says it will cover the losses; analytics firms link the attack to North Korean hackers and point to an engineer's laptop as a possible entry point.
Translated from the Portuguese original by the Panorama newsroom. Read in Portuguese
Summary written by the Panorama newsroom from the sources listed below. Facts are attributed to the original publications.
Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Thursday (29) that digital assets valued at US$ 6.3 billion (about R$ 33 billion) were affected by a hacker attack. According to g1, it is believed to be the largest cryptocurrency theft in history, ahead of the US$ 1.5 billion taken from Bybit in 2025.
According to the company, initial checks indicate that an engineer's laptop was compromised, which allegedly enabled unauthorized withdrawals. Co-CEO Richard Teng explained that the intruder accessed a service environment to send improper transactions and that there is no evidence of a private key leak.
Two analytics firms attributed the attack to the North Korean group TraderTraitor, also known as Lazarus. Check Point said the estimated losses make this the largest cryptocurrency theft ever seen, and TRM Labs pointed to similarities with earlier incidents linked to the country.
Binance said about half of the assets were frozen and that it will cover all losses with its own funds. The platforms Tether and Circle froze approximately US$ 2.4 billion in response. Withdrawals were temporarily suspended, and on Friday (30) the exchange said it had begun recovering the assets and expected to normalize withdrawals within 45 hours.
After the alerts, bitcoin fell more than 4%, according to g1.