Billions of dollars in crypto left wallets belonging to Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange, late on Thursday, October 29, 2026. Binance says it is investigating a “potential security issue” and that user funds are completely safe. It has not yet confirmed a hack. The story is still developing and the numbers below may change.
Key facts
- When: the first large transfer happened at 4:24 p.m. ET (20:24 GMT). More money kept moving out over the following hour.
- From where: Binance hot wallets, the online wallets an exchange uses to pay out customer withdrawals. Most of the money left on Ethereum.
- How much: blockchain trackers count at least $3.5 billion moved to a newly created wallet. Some estimates across several blockchains go above $5.5 billion. Binance has not given a figure.
- Who: the attacker is unknown. How they got control of the wallet is not yet clear.
What Binance and others said
- Binance first said its teams were “actively investigating” and had not confirmed any impact on customers. A later message said user funds are “completely safe”.
- Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s founder, who no longer runs the exchange, wrote that it “does look like a hack” and that, as a shareholder, he expects all user funds to be fully covered.
Part of the money is frozen
The stolen funds included large amounts of stablecoins (digital dollars), which their issuers can block. Tether’s chief executive said the company froze more than $1.5 billion in USDT. Circle’s chief executive said it froze more than $800 million in USDC, working with law enforcement. So the receiving wallet is now partly frozen, but the bitcoin and ether in it cannot be blocked the same way.
Market reaction
- Bitcoin fell below $79,000, down about 3% on the day.
- BNB, the token linked to Binance, dropped about 7%.
- Ether also slipped, by about 4%.
Context
If the losses are confirmed, this would be the largest crypto hack ever. Even the lowest estimate is more than double the previous record: about $1.5 billion stolen from the exchange Bybit in February 2025. Binance itself was last hacked in 2019, when it lost about 7,000 bitcoin and covered the loss from its own emergency fund.
Why it matters
Binance handles more crypto trading than any other exchange, so a hack of this size touches the whole market. The key questions now are whether customer balances stay untouched, how quickly Binance covers any loss, and how much of the money can be frozen or traced. Customers should follow only Binance’s official channels: scammers often use moments like this to send fake “security” links.
This article is for information only and is not financial advice.
