This article was updated on Oct. 30, 2026, at 12:00 UTC to reflect Binance's confirmation of the breach and its response.

Binance confirmed on Friday that it had suffered a security breach affecting approximately $6.3 billion in assets — the largest cryptocurrency theft on record. The exchange said it had worked with blockchain partners to freeze about $3 billion in affected assets and pledged to cover all losses through its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and company funds.

The company disclosed the breach in an official announcement. According to blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs, the theft was roughly four times the size of the $1.5 billion Bybit hack of February 2025, which previously held the record.

Concerns were first raised by blockchain researcher Spreek, who posted on X that assets from a Binance-linked Ethereum wallet had been transferred to a newly created address through a contract call allegedly funded by Tornado Cash. Spreek later reported that wallets connected to the transfers had begun selling Tether USDt (USDT) through decentralized exchanges.

Later on Thursday, Arkham Intelligence identified a collection of wallets labeled “binance-hacker-1029” holding approximately $5.84 billion in digital assets. The entity is tracked on Arkham's explorer. The figure represented the wallets' reported holdings rather than a confirmed estimate of stolen funds.

Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao said on X that the activity appeared to be a hack. He added that Tether and Circle had frozen approximately $971 million and $823 million, respectively, and said he expected all user funds to be fully covered.

Tether and Circle freeze more than $2.36 billion

Blockchain security firm Blockaid said in an initial assessment on Thursday that its team had identified roughly $3.3 billion in suspicious transfers involving Binance-linked wallets across Ethereum, Arbitrum and Avalanche.

Shortly after news of the hack emerged, Tether and Circle, the two largest stablecoin issuers by market capitalization, said they had frozen more than $2.36 billion in tokens linked to the incident. The coordinated freezes underscore the leverage centralized stablecoin issuers hold in theft responses, since tokens they issue can be frozen at the source even after they leave a hacked platform.

Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said on X that the company had frozen more than $800 million in USDC in coordination with law enforcement and would continue supporting the investigation. A few minutes later, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino announced on X that his firm had frozen more than $1.567 billion in USDT tied to the hack.

“Protecting the industry and our partners is our main priority,” Ardoino wrote.

Breach follows Polymarket trading halt

The Binance hack came hours after prediction market platform Polymarket temporarily halted trading following a compromise at a third-party provider. Polymarket said it had fixed the issue and pledged to reimburse affected users, with all systems reported operational by 7:05 p.m. UTC on Thursday.

The final confirmed size of the theft, how much more can be recovered through freezes, and how Binance's coverage pledge will be executed for affected users remain open questions. Cointelegraph is providing live coverage as the investigation develops.