Binance hacked: how much was stolen and what we know

Binance was hacked on Thursday, October 29, 2026, in an attack that may be the largest cryptocurrency theft in history. Crypto worth between $5.3 billion and $5.9 billion left the hot wallets of the world’s largest exchange, according to estimates from the analytics firms Glassnode and Chainalysis. Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals, and co-founder and co-CEO Yi He said user funds are safe and that “Binance will cover all hacking losses.”

The exchange has not published its own loss figure. It has only confirmed that $2.54 billion has been frozen and that tracing is ongoing.

When was Binance hacked and how did the attack unfold?

According to Ethereum network data published by analysts, the attack began at about 20:20 UTC. A so-called delegation transaction, which assigns a smart contract to a wallet, was executed on a wallet labelled “Binance 14”. About three minutes later its contents were swept to an external address.

That single wallet lost about 167,464 ether, 1.615 billion USDT and dozens of other tokens. One receiving address collected about $3.52 billion in under 40 minutes. Analysts then recorded outflows on the Bitcoin and Tron networks as well.

Binance first said its teams were “aware of reports of a potential security issue” and were investigating. At about midnight UTC, Yi He announced that deposits and withdrawals had been temporarily suspended.

How much was stolen from Binance?

The exact amount is not yet known, and estimates differ:

• Glassnode: about $5.3 billion.
• On-chain tally across Ethereum, Bitcoin and Tron: about $5.57 billion.
• Arkham: the attacker’s wallet held more than $5.7 billion, including nearly $1.5 billion in bitcoin, $900 million in ether and about $1.4 billion in the stablecoins USDT and USDC.
• Chainalysis: about $5.9 billion at the time of the theft.

According to DefiLlama, Binance held about $144 billion in assets before the attack. The amount taken is roughly four percent of the exchange’s total assets.

Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) wrote on X: “It does look like a hack on Binance.” He added that the loss “might be a bit higher” than the reported figures, but that the exchange “will cover” it.

How did hackers break into the Binance wallet?

The leading explanation links the attack to EIP-7702, a feature introduced on Ethereum with the Pectra upgrade in May 2025. It lets an ordinary wallet authorize a smart contract to act on its behalf.

Security firm Blockaid says the delegation transaction carried 50 authorizations for different nonces, one of which matched. The contract was deployed earlier the same day, and a linked address was funded through the Tornado Cash mixer. Blockaid’s chief executive said the attacker “reprogrammed” the hot wallet and reused that access more than an hour later.

How the attacker obtained the signature has not been established. Analysts mention a stolen private key, a deceived authorized signer or a breach of the exchange’s own signing system. None of these has been confirmed.

Who is behind the Binance hack?

There is no official attribution. Investigator ZachXBT and Blockaid said North Korea is likely behind the attack. Neither Binance nor any government agency has confirmed this. The exchange has also not said whether the hackers contacted it.

The attacker swapped part of the funds on the decentralized exchange Uniswap. On Aave, the attacker borrowed at least 20,000 WETH, about $44 million, using stolen USDT as collateral.

How much has been frozen after the Binance attack?

Stablecoin issuers moved quickly. Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino said more than 1.567 billion USDT had been frozen. Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire said more than 800 million USDC had been frozen in coordination with law enforcement.

Yi He thanked Ripple, which froze about $200 million. World Liberty Financial froze about $27 million in USD1, and the Arbitrum Security Council about $30.5 million. Aave temporarily froze its Ethereum V3 markets, noting that its contracts were not affected.

Binance says the verified total of frozen assets stands at $2.54 billion and may rise.

How did the Binance hack affect the price of bitcoin?

The market fell on Thursday evening. Bitcoin lost 4.8 percent and dropped close to $77,000, ether fell 5.7 percent and Binance’s BNB token about eight percent. The AAVE token fell 11 percent. About $1.4 billion in leveraged positions was liquidated over 24 hours, mostly bets on a rise.

Bitcoin was already under pressure before the suspicious transactions began, so not all of the drop can be attributed to the attack.

Is the Binance hack the largest crypto theft in history?

If the estimates hold, yes. The previous record was the theft from the Bybit exchange in February 2025, about $1.5 billion, which the FBI attributed to North Korea. Blockaid’s Ido Ben-Natan called the Binance attack “the biggest crypto hack in history.”

Binance has been hacked once before. In May 2019, 7,000 bitcoin, then worth about $41 million, were stolen, and the loss was covered from the exchange’s user protection fund.

On the same Thursday, prediction market Polymarket said one of its third-party providers had been breached, with losses under $3 million. Binance has promised a full post-mortem once the investigation is complete.