Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Thursday it was investigating reports of a potential security issue. Binance founder Changpeng Zhao posted on X that the incident "looks like a hack of Binance", while the exchange did not explicitly confirm that funds had been stolen.
According to a Binance statement, cryptocurrency firms had frozen more than $2.5bn in funds by Thursday evening. Binance noted on its X account approximately two hours after its initial post that the current verified total of frozen funds stood at $2.54bn. The exchange added that this amount could continue to rise as teams worked with police, issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners to track and freeze additional assets. It was not immediately clear how much damage the hackers may have caused.
Stablecoin issuers quickly froze funds on Thursday evening. Stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle each announced they had frozen funds in response to the incident. Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and chief executive of Circle, wrote on X that the company had frozen more than the equivalent of $800m in the currency linked to the incident "in coordination with police". Paolo Ardoino, chief executive of Tether, said on X that the company had frozen the equivalent of more than $1.5bn in the currency linked to the "potential hack of Binance exchange".
A Binance spokesperson stated: "Rest assured that user funds are completely safe." Binance said its security teams were urgently reviewing all relevant information and would publish updates via official Binance channels once it had verified information.
Zhao posted on X on Thursday: "User funds are safe!" He added that, although he no longer manages Binance, "as a shareholder I expect all user funds to be fully covered". Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, who pleaded guilty in 2023 to a criminal offence related to a failure to prevent money laundering on the platform and stepped down as chief executive. Donald Trump pardoned him in 2025.
The price of bitcoin fell 3.2 per cent on Thursday afternoon to less than $79,000.
