Binance Crypto Platform Announces Breach, Freezes $2.5 Billion
Binance suffered a major breach and froze assets worth $2.5 billion, while Tether and Circle froze additional billions.
Translated by Qiyas from الراي — Original source
Cryptocurrency exchange platform Binance announced on Thursday that it had suffered a major hack, prompting it to freeze assets worth more than $2.5 billion to prevent them from being stolen.
The platform, which is the largest in the world by daily cryptocurrency trading volume, stated that it had suspended trading on certain products.
Several experts noted that large quantities of assets appear to have been stolen.
Changpeng Zhao, the former CEO of Binance who stepped down from managing the platform but still holds a majority stake, said, “It does indeed appear to be a hack of the Binance platform.”
For his part, Paolo Ardoino, CEO of Tether, the company that issues the cryptocurrency USDT, stated that his company had frozen approximately $1.6 billion “linked to the possibility that the Binance platform was hacked.”
Jeremy Allaire, CEO of Circle, also reported that his company had frozen more than $800 million worth of USDC.
Both USDT and USDC are classified as “stablecoins,” digital currencies whose value is pegged to the US dollar.
Hours before Binance confirmed the hack, several industry observers indicated that cybercriminals had gained access to the platform.
Some viewed this attack as potentially the largest of its kind ever, surpassing the $1.5 billion theft from the Bybit platform in February 2025, an incident then attributed to hackers linked to North Korea.
In the wake of this news, the price of Bitcoin fell by more than three percent.
