BINANCE ESTIMATES $6.3 BILLION IMPACT FROM SUSPECTED HACK

Binance said a suspected security breach had an estimated impact of about $6.3 billion (£4.7 billion). Its initial investigation suggested that an attacker may have compromised a DevOps engineer’s laptop, gained access to a service container and submitted unauthorised withdrawal transactions. Binance said it had found no evidence that any wallet private keys had leaked. “User funds are safe,” the exchange said. Binance said it would cover losses using its SAFU fund and company funds.

Binance said it had frozen about $3 billion in affected assets on blockchain networks, leaving the status of the remaining estimated $3.3 billion unclear. Stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether also froze assets thought to be linked to the suspected attack. Bitcoin fell to a six-week low, with quoted prices ranging from $76,469.82 to $77,646 as trading continued on Friday. Ether fell to a two-month low in one account, with quoted prices ranging from $2,185.83 to $2,238.76. CoinGecko recorded Binance-linked BNB down more than 8% over 24 hours at $694.

Binance said it was working with law enforcement, token issuers, blockchain analysts and other partners to trace and freeze further assets. The exchange said it would publish a technical account after completing its investigation. Analytics firm Chainalysis said the suspected theft could become the largest cryptocurrency hack recorded. Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao wrote on X that the incident “looked like a hack”. Zhao founded Binance in 2017 and stepped down as chief executive after pleading guilty in 2023 to an offence related to failures to prevent money laundering on the platform.