Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has confirmed a massive security breach that drained an estimated $6.3 billion from its wallets. The company’s high-profile founder, Changpeng Zhao — widely known as CZ — confirmed the attack on X, telling users that customer funds remain safe. The incident, which unfolded over roughly 20 minutes starting late on October 29, 2026, is now the biggest crypto theft on record. Blockchain analysts suspect North Korea-linked hackers are behind it. About half of the stolen assets have already been frozen, and Binance says it will cover every loss.
What Exactly Happened at Binance?
The trouble began when an attacker gained access to Binance’s internal systems and started moving funds from wallets the exchange uses to process customer transactions. Binance’s early investigation pointed to a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer — a staff member responsible for keeping the platform’s technical infrastructure running. That laptop appears to have given the attacker a way into a service container, which was then used to submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions.
Further digging uncovered “additional points of breach,” Binance said in a statement on X, without offering more technical details. The exchange stressed that it found no evidence of a private key leak. The bulk of the theft happened within about 20 minutes, according to blockchain records reviewed by multiple outlets.
Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs said the attackers compromised Binance’s “signing infrastructure” — the system that authorises transactions — rather than breaking encryption directly. “In layman’s terms, the attacker may not have stolen the vault key, they may have hijacked the system that tells the vault to release money,” Joshua Chu, a Hong Kong lawyer who works on crypto cases, told the Economic Times.
Cyber security expert Jayant Dave from Check Point put it even more simply:
“The attackers didn’t break the encryption or steal the private keys. They took over the system that tells the keys what to sign.”
The Founder in the Spotlight: CZ’s Pardon and Billionaire Status
The hack has thrust Changpeng Zhao back into the headlines at a complicated moment. Born in China and a Canadian citizen, CZ built Binance into the world’s dominant crypto exchange. In 2023, Binance pleaded guilty to violating US anti-money-laundering laws and paid $4.3 billion in penalties. CZ himself was sentenced to four months in federal prison and stepped down as CEO.
After his release in September 2024, CZ received a pardon from President Donald Trump in October 2025. The pardon drew attention because Binance has a business relationship with the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial, a major source of the president’s wealth. CZ has repeatedly denied that his pardon was linked to any business dealings, and his lawyers have dismissed claims that he “bought” the pardon with cryptocurrency.
CZ no longer runs Binance day to day, but he remains its majority shareholder. His personal fortune has soared: by September 2026, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index put his net worth at $91.2 billion after a $9.76 billion jump in a single day. That makes him one of the richest people on the planet — and gives him a very direct stake in how Binance handles the $6.3 billion hole.
CZ addressed the hack directly on X:
“User funds are safe! It does look like a hack on Binance. Appreciate the quick freeze from Tether (
$971m) and Circle ($823m). I don’t manage Binance (.com) anymore, but as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered.”
North Korea Linked to Record Heist
Investigators have not officially named a culprit, but the evidence is pointing in a familiar direction. TRM Labs said it has a “high degree of confidence” that the TraderTraitor group — part of the notorious Lazarus Group — carried out the attack. The firm cited “reliable intelligence from both on-chain and off-chain sources” and noted that several characteristics matched earlier North Korean-linked thefts.
TraderTraitor was blamed for the February 2025 hack on Bybit, which saw $1.5 billion stolen — the previous record for a crypto heist. The Binance breach is more than four times larger. North Korea has consistently denied involvement in cyber theft, but analysts say the regime uses stolen crypto to fund its weapons programmes.
Emily Taylor, co-founder of the Global Signal Exchange, told BBC Radio 4 that the Binance hack sets a “grim new record” for financial losses and was carried out “on a speed and scale we’ve never seen.” She also explained a common entry trick: hackers lure engineers with fake job adverts, then persuade them to download software that compromises their computers. “If you think of an engineer with a very responsible job in a situation like Binance, they will have a very wide-ranging ability to go all over the system to make withdrawals,” she said.
Binance’s Plan to Cover Losses: SAFU, SpaceX Stake, and Frozen Funds
Binance has pledged to make users whole, and the numbers behind that promise are now coming into focus. The exchange said about $3 billion of the stolen assets had been frozen on-chain by October 30, thanks to quick action from stablecoin issuers and blockchain partners.
Tether froze more than $1.5 billion of its USDT stablecoin, while Circle froze more than $800 million of USDC. Those freezes cover the stablecoin portion of the haul, but they cannot touch the Bitcoin and Ether that was moved. Blockchain data showed the attacker’s wallet holding more than $5.7 billion in tokens at one point, including nearly $1.5 billion of Bitcoin.
Binance’s own safety net is the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU), an emergency reserve set up in 2018. As of February 2026, SAFU held roughly $1 billion in crypto assets, entirely in Bitcoin. CZ laid out the rough math in a post on X: with about $3 billion frozen and $1.17 billion remaining in SAFU, the gap was around $2 billion.
That gap, he suggested, could be covered by Binance’s stake in SpaceX, which he valued at “$1.x billion.” However, Binance co-founder Yi He later clarified that the exchange does not need to sell those SpaceX shares:
“Binance does not need to sell SpaceX shares because its annual revenue is enough to cover losses after hackers stole $6.3 billion from the crypto platform.”
Market Shake and Withdrawal Timeline
The hack rattled crypto markets, though the reaction was contained. Bitcoin fell about 5% to roughly $76,400, its lowest level in more than a month, before paring some losses. Ether, Solana, and XRP also dipped. Binance’s own BNB token dropped as much as 8% before recovering.
Binance suspended all deposits and withdrawals immediately after the breach was detected. Deposits were restored relatively quickly, but withdrawals remained paused while the exchange upgraded its security checks and address controls. Richard Teng, Binance’s co-CEO, said the team was targeting a restart within 40 hours, aiming for Sunday, November 1. Binance’s official statement said it was “still on track towards the expected timeline to resume the withdrawal service in 45 hours.”
Teng also issued a direct message to users:
“Your money is safe, and we’re covering every loss.”
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What This Means for Binance Users
For the average Binance user, the most important question is simple: is my money still there? Binance says yes. The exchange has promised to publish an updated Proof of Reserves once the remediation is complete, and it says customer funds are ring-fenced from the company’s own losses.
The hack does expose a structural weakness that goes beyond Binance. Jeff Ko, chief analyst at crypto mining pool ViaBTC, told the South China Morning Post:
“This incident once again highlights the security risks of centralised exchanges and the crypto market more broadly amid AI development.”
Ko added that Binance held roughly $144 billion in assets on its platform before the incident, and that the exchange can “absorb the loss comfortably” given the frozen funds and its revenue base. Still, the fact that a single compromised laptop could open the door to a $6.3 billion outflow is a warning that will echo across the crypto industry for months.
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