Binance Says It Will Cover Losses After $6bn Hack Attributed to North Korea
Binance is racing to freeze assets after a $6.3bn hack that analysts attributed to North Korea’s TraderTraitor unit. The exchange says it will cover all…
Analysts have attributed a record-breaking breach at Binance to North Korea’s state-backed hackers, raising questions about the safety of assets held on crypto exchanges. The exchange says it is working to freeze affected funds and will cover all hacking losses.
Binance said deposits and withdrawals were temporarily suspended while its security teams checked systems and traced assets. About $3bn has been located so far; the company gave no update on the other $3.3bn.
The scale is striking.
Analysts point to TraderTraitor
Crypto analysis firms TRM and Chainalysis attributed the attack to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking unit. TRM said it had “high confidence” in that assessment. Binance did not explicitly confirm that funds had been stolen, while the two firms said more than $6bn had been taken.
An initial investigation suggested the breach may have begun with a hacked laptop belonging to one of Binance’s engineers. Binance said the attacker then gained access to one of its systems and made unauthorized withdrawals. The company said its teams were “working around the clock” to address the problem.
Co-founder Yi He said Binance would cover “all hacking losses”. Co-chief executive Richard Teng also sought to reassure users, saying: “Bottom line – your money is safe, and we’re covering every loss.”
The exchange said in a statement that deposits and withdrawals were paused as a precaution while teams secured wallet infrastructure and worked with law enforcement and industry partners. The suspension directly limits customers’ ability to move funds through the platform while those checks continue.
Market reaction and wider concerns
Markets reacted in early Asian trading on Friday. Bitcoin fell more than 3% to a six-week low of $76,368. Shares in Coinbase Global slid 4.8%, while shares in Strategy fell nearly 6% in extended US trading.
The breach comes as crypto markets were already under pressure from higher US interest rates and softer demand from exchange-traded fund buyers, analysts said. Tim Sun, a senior researcher at Hong Kong-based HashKey Group, said the incident could further weaken risk appetite and lead investors to reconsider the safety of assets held on centralized exchanges, as well as counterparty, solvency and liquidity risks.
Binance has 335 million registered users globally and held about $162.8bn in assets under custody, according to its 2025 annual report. The company also operates a secure asset fund held entirely in bitcoin, which its website says is intended to protect user assets in security breaches.
The suspected North Korean attribution fits a pattern of crypto thefts. The FBI linked North Korea to the theft of approximately $1.5bn in virtual assets from a Tokyo cryptocurrency exchange last year, described in the report as the previous record crypto heist.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, who stepped down as CEO in 2023, wrote on X on Thursday: “User funds are safe!” He added that the incident “does look like a hack on Binance” and said he expected all user funds to be fully covered.
Binance’s security teams are continuing to trace the affected assets, with about $3bn located so far.