Crypto markets slide after suspected multi-billion-dollar Binance hack triggers mass liquidations

Sources · 16 sources

1. DE

   DecryptArticle · 1d ago

   Binance Drained of $5.5 Billion in Suspected Hack, Tether and Circle Freeze $1.8 Billion An on-chain tally puts the suspected Binance drain at $5.57 billion across three blockchains, as Tether and Circle froze $1.8 billion.

   Open source
2. LD

   Lark Davis@LarkDavisPost on X · 1d ago

   $1.54B liquidated in 24h 238,414 traders rekt (mostly longs). Biggest single order: $11.09M BTC on Binance. date: CoinGlass https://t.co/bJozcfUcsk

   Open source
3. BS

   BSCN@BSCNewsPost on X · 1d ago

   Binance investigates a possible security breach @binance says its security teams are looking into reports of a potential security issue and that user funds are “completely safe.” The exchange has not confirmed a hack, says it will share updates only through official channels, and warns users to ignore unofficial links and messages. Tether CEO @paoloardoino said the company has frozen more than $1.56B in $USDT tied to the potential hack, while Circle CEO @jerallaire said it froze more than $800M in $USDC in coordination with law enforcement. Former Binance CEO @cz_binance said it “does look like a hack” and that, as a shareholder, he expects user funds to be fully covered.

   Open source
4. CO

   CoinDesk@CoinDeskPost on X · 1d ago

   UPDATE: Binance says the total amount of stolen assets frozen has now reached approximately $3 billion. The exchange says it is working with law enforcement and industry partners to trace and freeze additional funds, adding that user funds are safe. https://t.co/5Pw1cparyF

   Open source
5. PR

   ProtosArticle · 1d ago

   LIVE: Binance suspends withdrawals amid massive crypto hack Billions of dollars worth of digital assets left wallets controlled by the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, on Thursday afternoon New York time. Pending the success of any recovery efforts, the dollar value of missing assets tentatively rank Binance’s loss today among the largest heists in world history. Withdrawals that founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) would eventually characterize as a hack began no later than 4:30pm, with researchers identifying smaller, prior transactions by the alleged hacker(s) throughout the day. As illegitimate withdrawals continued, Binance began halting withdrawals sometime around 6pm, with an official pause announcement at 6:22pm . By 8pm, Arkham Intelligence estimated the value of illegitimate withdrawals had already exceeded $5.8 billion. Loss estimates varied widely, from Binance’s $2.54 billion declaration at 7:22pm to more than double that figure according to third-party researchers. Binance’s social media account , as well as CEO Hi Ye, swore that the giant exchange would somehow reimburse customers for any losses. Live updates from the October 29 Binance hack Stablecoin issuers Tether, Circle, World Liberty Financial, and Paxos quickly froze stablecoins to assist Binance. At 7:06pm, Binance said Binance Alpha trading was suspended. CEO He said a post-mortem would follow after staff finish the investigation. This is a developing situation, with updates arriving by the minute. Protos is liveblogging this event below. Scroll down for additional updates as they arrive. Got a tip? Send us an email securely via Protos Leaks . The liveblog has ended. No liveblog updates yet. Load more The post LIVE: Binance suspends withdrawals amid massive crypto hack appeared first on Protos .

   Open source
6. BT

   Bull Theory@BullTheoryioPost on X · 1d ago

   BREAKING: Bitcoin crashes below $77,000 following one of the largest hack in financial recorded history. Estimated losses reach $5.6 BILLION, nearly 3.9% of Binance's entire $144 Billion in assets under custody. Binance says $3 Billion worth of stolen crypto has been frozen so far. $170 Billion wiped out from the crypto market as $1.32 Billion worth of positions were liquidated in just 12 hours.

   Open source
7. UN

   UnchainedArticle · 1d ago

   Binance Says User Funds Are ‘Completely Safe’ After $3.5 Billion Drains From Its Hot Wallets Binance said on X that “user funds are completely safe” after wallets Etherscan labels as Binance hot wallets sent billions of dollars in crypto to a single new address on Thursday afternoon, and Tether and Circle froze about $2 billion in stablecoins. That line came at 5:29 p.m. ET in a revised statement. A 5:16 p.m. ET version said its teams were “actively investigating” a “potential security issue” and had “not confirmed any impact to user funds.” The exchange has not called the outflows a hack. Founder Changpeng Zhao , who no longer runs the exchange, posted a minute earlier that “it does look like a hack on Binance” and that, as a shareholder, he expects “all user funds will be fully covered.” Tether blacklisted the receiving address at 5:01 p.m. ET, and Circle followed at 5:04 p.m. ET with 823 million USDC , balances Unchained read directly from the USDT and USDC token contracts; the address now holds about 1.18 billion frozen USDT. Tether also blacklisted seven downstream wallets, two of which hold about 205 million USDT combined. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said at 5:25 p.m. ET that Tether “froze more than 1.567B USDT related to a potential Binance exchange hack,” a figure Binance co-founder Yi He repeated . That is higher than the roughly 1.38 billion USDT Unchained can see frozen with balances on Ethereum. Get Unchained’s crypto news in your inbox with the free Unchained Daily newsletter . A Second Sweep After Binance’s Statement The drain was still running after Binance’s statement. At 5:44 p.m. ET the address that set up the delegation swept Binance 14 again, moving about 200 million more USDT and roughly 370 ETH that had built up in the wallet into the frozen address. As of 6:34 p.m. ET, Binance 14 was still delegated to that address’s contract, though no further sweep had followed. The receiving address has since moved tokens that Tether and Circle cannot freeze, sending about 217.5 million ENA and 29,934 WBETH to another wallet, and one of the wallets that swapped USDT into ETH moved 122,310 ETH to a fresh address at 5:47 p.m. ET. On-chain analyst Officer’s Notes put total outflows from Binance-labeled wallets at about $5.64 billion counting Bitcoin and Tron, a figure Unchained has not verified. About $3.5 Billion on Ethereum Alone By Unchained’s own count of Ethereum transfers , the receiving address took in about $3.52 billion between 4:24 p.m. and 5:04 p.m. ET: 197,170 ETH (about $456 million at the time), 1.68 billion USDT, 823 million USDC and roughly $564 million across 62 other tokens, with other tokens priced when Unchained pulled the data. The total is more than double the “approximately $1.5 billion” that the FBI said in a public service announcement North Korean hackers stole from Bybit in February 2025. It leaves out other chains, and reported Bitcoin outflows remain unverified. Security firm Blockaid, which said in a note from its PR agency that it is investigating about $3.3 billion in suspicious outflows from Binance hot wallets, said at 5:11 p.m. ET that outflows from Binance hot wallets on Ethereum, Arbitrum and Avalanche “look consistent with unauthorized movement from those wallets” and put the Arbitrum and Avalanche portions at about $19.5 million and $24 million. Its approximate Ethereum figure, about $2.5 billion plus 780 million USDC, is lower than Unchained’s count and, it said, “still being reconciled.” On Avalanche, Unchained confirmed that four wallets Blockaid identifies as Binance’s sent about 1.81 million AVAX to the same receiving address, which still holds about 8.4 million USDT there. How the Funds Moved An address funded in part through Tornado Cash’s 0.1 ETH pool set up an EIP-7702 delegation on the wallet Etherscan labels Binance 14 at 4:20 p.m. ET, pointing it at a contract the same address had deployed earlier that day. EIP-7702 lets an ordinary wallet run a smart contract’s code, but only with an authorization signed by that wallet’s own key. The delegation transaction carried 50 such authorizations for consecutive Binance 14 nonces, and one landed, which Blockaid said on X meant the attacker “didn’t know Binance 14’s live nonce.” Binance 16’s transfer, below, was an ordinary transaction signed with that wallet’s own key. Four minutes later it swept Binance 14, Binance 16 sent 28,005.6 ETH to the same destination, and calls through Binance 14 pulled 780 million USDC , then 43 million more, from a wallet Etherscan labels Hot Wallet 34. Before the freezes, the receiving address sent 700 million USDT to two wallets that quickly swapped much of it into ETH. Security firm PeckShield flagged “unexpected large outflows” at 4:55 p.m. ET, more than 20 minutes after on-chain analyst Spreek raised an early public alarm. Last month, Unchained looked at how Bitget chased $388 million in funds stolen in a hack. *This story was updated with how the Binance 14 delegation was signed, the latest fund movements and an analyst’s multichain estimate.* Related Listen: Ledger Wallets Were Drained of $100 Million. Is Self-Custody Still Safe? The post Binance Says User Funds Are ‘Completely Safe’ After $3.5 Billion Drains From Its Hot Wallets appeared first on Unchained .

   Open source
8. WG

   Watcher.Guru@WatcherGuruPost on X · 1d ago

   JUST IN: Over $1.3 billion in leveraged crypto longs have been liquidated in the past 5 hours. This comes after Binance was hacked, with an estimated $5.7 billion in cryptocurrency stolen, making it the largest hack in crypto history. Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies continue to dump, with $BTC falling under $77,000 and $ETH falling below $2,215

   Open source
9. BT

   Bull Theory@BullTheoryioPost on X · 1d ago

   🚨 THIS IS BEYOND ANYTHING CRYPTO HAS SEEN BEFORE. Binance has been hacked, with estimated stolen assets reaching as high as $6.3 BILLION, making this the largest crypto hack in history. And now the entire crypto market is crashing. Bitcoin has crashed below $77,000, dropping more than 6% as panic spreads across the market. Here's how massive the damage is: • $6.3 BILLION: Latest reported estimate of assets stolen from Binance across multiple blockchains. • $170 BILLION: Wiped out from the total crypto market capitalization following the news. • $1.39 BILLION: Worth of leveraged crypto positions liquidated in just 12 hours. For perspective, look at the biggest crypto hacks ever recorded: • Binance (2026): Up to $6.3 BILLION. • Bybit (2025): $1.5 BILLION. • Ronin Network (2022): $625 MILLION. • Poly Network (2021): $611 MILLION. • BNB Bridge (2022): $570 MILLION. • Coincheck (2018): $534 MILLION. • Mt. Gox (2014): Approximately $450 MILLION at the time. At the highest estimate, Binance's hack is more than FOUR TIMES bigger than Bybit and TEN TIMES bigger than Ronin. It's also bigger than all SIX of the other major hacks listed above COMBINED. And this happened at one of the world's largest crypto exchanges. 1. BILLIONS DRAINED FROM MULTIPLE BINANCE WALLETS On October 29, hackers gained control of several Binance hot wallets and transferred billions of dollars. • Around $3.3–$3.5 BILLION was drained from Ethereum wallets alone. • Binance 14 lost approximately $2.5 BILLION in a single transaction. • That included 167,464 ETH, 1.615 BILLION USDT and dozens of other tokens. • Binance 16 lost another 28,006 ETH alongside other assets. • Hot Wallet 34 was also compromised, with approximately $823 MILLION in USDC affected. • Additional funds were moved from wallets on Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, Bitcoin, Tron and other networks. The hackers didn't stop after the first transfers. They continued draining compromised wallets when new deposits arrived. 2. THE HACKERS HAD PREPARED THE ATTACK The attack began with preparations on October 28–29. • The hackers funded their operational wallet through Tornado Cash. • They deployed a malicious contract designed to drain assets. • They tested the attack on separate wallets before targeting Binance. • Around 20:20 UTC on October 29, the hackers began transferring billions from Binance wallets. After the theft, they split the stolen funds across different addresses, swapped stablecoins into ETH and moved assets between blockchains. 3. BINANCE'S WALLET SECURITY WAS COMPROMISED The hackers gained access to the private keys or signing authority of multiple Binance hot wallets. They used Ethereum's EIP-7702 feature to give a malicious contract control over Binance 14. The hackers submitted 50 signed authorizations covering consecutive wallet nonces. Once the delegation succeeded, they could repeatedly drain assets from that wallet. Other Binance wallets were drained through normal transactions signed using compromised keys. This wasn't some network hack. The hackers gained access to the systems controlling Binance's own wallets. The exact method used to obtain that access has not been confirmed. 4. AROUND $3 BILLION IN STOLEN ASSETS FROZEN • Tether froze more than $1.56 BILLION in USDT linked to the hack. • Circle froze approximately $823 MILLION in USDC. • Ripple reportedly froze another $200 MILLION. • Arbitrum's Security Council secured approximately $30.5 MILLION. • Other projects also froze assets connected to the hackers. Total frozen funds were estimated at roughly $2.5–$3 BILLION. However, a large amount of ETH, BTC and other assets remained outside those freezes. Binance temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals following the hack. The exchange confirmed it was investigating the security breach and said all customer funds were safe. The estimated $6.3 billion theft is equivalent to nearly 4.4% of Binance's $144 billion in assets under custody. Even the lower estimate of $3.3 billion would make this more than TWICE the size of the Bybit hack. The final losses are still being calculated because billions of dollars have been frozen. But the consequences are already extending far beyond Binance. This is one of the most devastating security failures in crypto history.

   Open source
10. CT

    Coin TelegraphArticle · 1d ago

    Binance points to engineer’s hacked laptop in $6.3B breach Binance said attackers may have used a compromised DevOps laptop to access internal infrastructure.

    Open source
11. WB

    Wu Blockchain@WuBlockchainPost on X · 1d ago

    Blockaid Reveals How Hacker Took Control of Binance Wallet: One of 50 EIP-7702 Authorizations Succeeded According to analysis by blockchain security firm Blockaid, the attacker used Ethereum’s EIP-7702 authorization mechanism to attack Binance’s Binance 14 hot wallet. Because the attacker could not determine the hot wallet’s live nonce, and EIP-7702 authorizations must match the account’s nonce at the time of transaction execution, the attacker submitted 50 authorizations with different nonces (18914775 to 18914824) in a single Type-4 transaction. Only one matched successfully, allowing the malicious delegation to take effect. The successful authorization delegated the hot wallet’s account code to an unverified malicious asset-transfer contract. The contract allows only the address designated by the attacker to execute the sweep() function, which can transfer ETH and ERC-20 tokens from the wallet while retaining 1 ETH for gas fees. Subsequent incoming assets may also be at risk of being transferred.

    Open source
12. CO

    CoindeskArticle · 1d ago

    Binance loses over $6 billion in 'biggest crypto hack in history' Crypto prices are sliding on the news, with bitcoin falling back to $77,000, though Binance's co-CEO said it would cover all losses.

    Open source
13. QU

    Quit@0xQuitPost on X · 1d ago

    ok safe to say binance is pwned The biggest assets were approximately: • 1.615B USDT • 62.6M RLUSD • 29,934 wBETH • 11,372 XAUt • 6.19M UNI • 198.4M ENA • 7.175T PEPE • 27.8M USD1 • 2.26M LINK • 127,853 AAVE about $2.5B at the explorer’s prices. 1. The attacker deployed a delegate contract, 0x63e842b0...73e9c6fAe, from the relayer at 15:59 UTC. 2. About four hours later, the relayer submitted an EIP-7702 authorization transaction That installed the malicious 7702 delegate code on Binance 14. 3. The relayer then made a call to Binance 14, executing the delegate code, and transferring Binance 14’s ETH and token balances. 4. The calldata is labeled sweep(address, address[]). The second argument is a list of recognizable token-contract addresses plus the zero-address (eth). 5. The same relayer later used the same delegate to move 780M USDC from Binance Hot Wallet 34 into the same pool • The relayer 0x7C... was funded by three Tornado Cash 0.1 ETH withdrawals over the prior two days. • The same pool also received 28,005.6 ETH from Binance 16 24 seconds after the main sweep. • The pool then forwarded 195,460 ETH to a fresh, unlabeled EOA • That EOA has only one transaction and currently holds the 195,460 ETH. What's a bit unclear is why the relayer was needed in the first place. If they had the private keys to the Binance wallets, they could have just sent the assets out in an atomic bundle without needing a relayer at all. So it seems likely that they didn't have the private keys and instead just had the 7702 auth signatures, which must have been phished somehow. I think we can go ahead and assume DPRK.

    Open source
14. MN

    Mario Nawfal@MarioNawfalPost on X · 1d ago

    🚨🇺🇸 One hacked employee laptop just cost Binance an estimated $6.3 billion, the biggest crypto theft on record Binance says attackers likely got in through a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop and pushed through unauthorized withdrawals, and it has frozen deposits and withdrawals while it investigates and promised to cover every customer's loss. About $3 billion has been frozen so far, most of it in stablecoins after Tether and Circle locked the tokens within hours, but roughly $2.4 billion in bitcoin and ether is still in the attacker's wallets, and those have no company that can hit pause. Bitcoin dropped more than 4% to under $78,000. The previous record, the Bybit hack in 2025, was $1.5 billion. The lesson is uncomfortable for an industry that sells itself as unhackable: the money that could be stopped was the money controlled by a company, and the money that got away was the part nobody controls. Getting it back now depends on the thieves trying to cash out through an exchange that cooperates, which can take months or years. Source: CNBC / Writer: Daniel

    Open source
15. CO

    CoindeskArticle · 1d ago

    Bitcoin, ether and XRP selloff wipes out $1.5 billion in leveraged crypto bets Bets on rising prices accounted for nearly 84% of forced closures, with Binance handling almost half the total. A rebound has since started catching short sellers.

    Open source
16. EV

    Evan@StockMKTNewzPost on X · 1d ago

    BINANCE'S HACK MAY BE THE BIGGEST CYBER HEIST IN HISTORY Chainalysis estimates $5.9B was stolen from the crypto exchange, and TRM Labs estimates more than $6B, per WSJ. Neither figure is confirmed by Binance. The previous record was $1.5B, stolen from crypto exchange Bybit in 2025 by North Korea-linked hackers. Binance has suspended all deposits and withdrawals. Tether and Circle have frozen about $3B of the stolen assets, according to Binance, which says user funds are safe.

    Open source
17. BL

    Bloomberg@businessPost on X · 1d ago

    Bitcoin fell below $77,000 for the first time in over a month after Binance Holdings, the world’s largest crypto exchange, said it had been hacked. https://t.co/TB6aFDhC9f

    Open source
18. BS

    BSCN@BSCNewsPost on X · 1d ago

    Ripple and World Liberty step in after Binance’s possible hack World Liberty co-founder @ZachWitkoff said @worldlibertyfi froze $27M of its $USD1 stablecoin tied to what he called the @binance hack. Binance co-founder @heyibinance separately thanked @Ripple for “promptly freezing” about 200 million, most likely in its $RLUSD stablecoin, since XRP can’t be frozen. Those add to the more than $1.56B in $USDT frozen by Tether and more than $800M in $USDC frozen by Circle, per their CEOs. Binance, which has not confirmed a hack, has paused withdrawals until “the security issue is fully resolved” and says user funds remain safe.

    Open source
19. TB

    The Block@TheBlockCoPost on X · 1d ago

    THE BLOCK: BNB fell 8.5% to $699 amid Binance's exploit. Bitcoin dropped 5.1% to $76,952, while Ether slid 5.9% to $2,210. binancecoin:native bitcoin:native ethereum:native https://t.co/N39ayKZXAH

    Open source