Binance customers woke up Friday to a frozen account screen and a staggering number. The world's biggest cryptocurrency exchange says roughly $6.3 billion in digital assets were caught up in a breach that security experts now call the largest crypto theft ever recorded.

Withdrawals remain switched off while the company checks that its systems are clean. Co-CEO Yi He said safety comes first and that money will not move out until the platform is confirmed secure. Binance has promised to make every affected user whole.

About half of the assets have already been locked in place. Stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle froze about $2.4 billion between them while other partners blocked more. The rest is still in the attackers' hands.

How the break-in started

Co-CEO Richard Teng said the first findings point to a single engineer's laptop that was compromised. From there an intruder reached a service container and pushed through withdrawals nobody had approved. Teng stressed that this was a multi-step operation rather than one careless click and that no individual employee has been blamed.

He also said the team has found no sign that any wallet private keys leaked. A later update from the company said investigators had uncovered other points of entry beyond the laptop and promised more details once the facts are confirmed.

Blockchain tracing firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis both say with high confidence that the job was done by TraderTraitor, a North Korean state-backed unit also known as Lazarus Group. The same crew was blamed for the $1.5 billion Bybit theft in early 2025. Western security agencies have said such stolen funds help pay for North Korea's weapons programs.

TRM estimates about $6.36 billion left Binance wallets across 10 blockchains, most of it in roughly 20 minutes. The firm says the attackers began preparing at least 36 hours ahead and used a mixing service to fund their wallets.

What it means for your money

Binance.US, the separate platform for American residents, says it was not affected. Coinbase also said it was untouched and is watching the situation.

Market analysts say the exchange does not appear to face a solvency crunch. Binance keeps an emergency reserve known as SAFU worth around $1.2 billion and says company funds will cover whatever that reserve cannot.

Getting the stolen crypto back is a slower story. Frozen stablecoins can be burned and reissued to victims once courts sign off. Bitcoin and ether have no central issuer, so investigators must follow them across public ledgers and grab them when they land at a cooperating platform. That process can take months or even years.

Prices felt the shock. Bitcoin slid more than 4% as word of the breach spread and was trading under $78,000 on Friday. Ether and Solana also fell. Traders say the clearest signal now is how fast Binance turns withdrawals back on and whether customers leave in an orderly way.