Binance said on Thursday that it had frozen digital assets worth around $3bn (£2.24bn) to prevent them being stolen while it investigates a security issue, according to BBC News (bbc.co.uk). The exchange suspended all deposits and withdrawals while its teams conduct security checks and said it would "cover all losses". Two other major platforms, Tether and Circle, said they had frozen a total of about $2.4bn of assets in response to the potential Binance hack.
The incident concerns Binance.com. Binance.US, the much smaller platform serving American residents, said it was not affected. Binance has not said how much may have been stolen, though some crypto experts have put the figure at well above $5bn. The exchange said the amount frozen may continue to increase as its teams work with law enforcement and other partners to trace and seize additional assets.
What the evidence supports
The published figures diverge, and the divergence matters. Al Jazeera (aljazeera.com) reported that at least $3bn in funds had been frozen following a "potential security issue", and that Bitcoin fell about 5 per cent after the incident, dropping below $77,000. The BBC put the Binance freeze at around $3bn and the combined Tether and Circle freeze at about $2.4bn. TechCrunch (techcrunch.com) reported that Circle froze about $800m and Tether about $1.56bn related to the hack, and that crypto watchers say at least $2bn has been drained from Binance's hot wallets, with some estimates reaching upwards of $5.7bn. Estimates of the loss are therefore not settled. Glassnode, a digital asset advisory firm, estimated the hack concerns a total of $5.3bn in crypto, the BBC reported. New York-based blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis estimated that more than $5.9bn has been stolen. TechCrunch noted the numbers have not been confirmed and that it is possible the theft is ongoing. Binance has not said whether it has received any correspondence from the hackers, and it is unclear who is behind the incident.The industry response
Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire said his firm was "closely tracking reports of a potential exploit involving Binance" and had frozen more than $800m in assets linked to the incident. Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino said his firm had frozen around $1.6bn "related to a potential Binance exchange hack", adding: "Protecting the industry and our partners is our main priority." The coordination between a major exchange and the two largest dollar-backed stablecoin issuers is the operational core of this event: the freezes are an attempt to stop stolen assets moving through the tokens most used for settlement. Changpeng Zhao, Binance's founder and largest shareholder, who stepped down as chief executive in 2023, said on X that it did look like a hack. "I don't manage Binance (.com) anymore, but as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered," Al Jazeera reported him saying. Binance spokesperson Ross O'Leary told TechCrunch that the exchange had "temporarily suspended withdrawals on multiple networks following a security incident as a precautionary measure".Scale and comparison
If confirmed at the upper end of the estimates, the incident would rank among the largest crypto thefts on record. The BBC noted that a Chainalysis estimate of more than $5.9bn stolen would be nearly four times the value taken from Dubai-based exchange Bybit in 2025, an incident attributed to hackers linked to North Korea. Al Jazeera reported that a confirmed hacking would exceed the $1.5bn heist carried out by the North Korean state-backed Lazarus Group in 2025, while TechCrunch put the 2025 Bybit breach at a record $1.4bn. The sources differ on the Bybit figure and on the framing of the record; readers should treat the comparison as directional rather than precise. Context on the wider trend comes from Al Jazeera, which cited the 2026 Crypto Crime Report by market intelligence firm TRM, saying cyber criminals stole $2.87bn in crypto assets across nearly 150 hacking incidents in 2025. Al Jazeera also reported that Binance, founded in China by Zhao in 2017, has about $155bn in assets under management, more than any other exchange, according to CoinMarketCap.Why It Matters
Binance is the world's largest crypto exchange by daily trading volumes, so a security incident there is a test of the industry's containment machinery rather than a single-firm problem. The freezes by Tether and Circle show that stablecoin issuers can act as a circuit breaker when stolen funds pass through their networks. The unanswered question is whether the frozen assets are recovered and returned, or written off. Binance's promise to cover all losses is a commitment, not yet an audited outcome.Commercial Impact
For traders and institutional counterparties, the immediate constraint is liquidity: deposits and withdrawals are suspended, and the timing of resumption is not yet public. For market structure, the episode reinforces the concentration risk that comes with a single venue handling a large share of global volume. For stablecoin issuers, the willingness to freeze balances at scale is a reminder that these tokens carry an operational lever that can be pulled quickly, which cuts both ways for users who value censorship resistance.Risks and Unknowns
The final loss figure is unknown and the estimates range from about $2bn drained from hot wallets to more than $5.9bn. It is unclear whether the theft is ongoing, who is responsible, and whether frozen funds will be recovered. Binance has promised a full post-mortem once its investigation is complete but has not given a date. The separate Polymarket outage reported by TechCrunch, in which a third-party software compromise led to a brief halt in trading, appears unrelated but underlines how many points of failure exist across crypto market infrastructure.FY Outlook
The next signals to watch are the timing of withdrawal resumption, the size of any confirmed loss in Binance's post-mortem, and whether the Tether and Circle freezes translate into recovery or remain stranded. Until those are published, the $3bn headline is a containment figure, not a confirmed loss.Sources and References
- BBC News (bbc.co.uk)
- Al Jazeera (aljazeera.com)
- TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)
