SINGAPORE — Cryptocurrency exchange Binance says about $6.3 billion was stolen in a hack that investigators have linked to North Korean hackers known as TraderTraitor, part of the Lazarus Group, making it the largest crypto theft on record.
Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs put the haul at approximately $6.36 billion across 10 blockchains, taken in about 20 minutes, The Guardian reported. The previous record was the $1.5 billion theft from the Bybit exchange in February 2025.
About $3 billion has been frozen, including more than $2.3 billion by stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle. Binance co-chief executive Richard Teng linked the breach to an engineer’s laptop and said the company was investigating additional points of breach.
Binance has said it will cover all losses and expects to resume withdrawals within 45 hours.
The hack rattled crypto markets. Bitcoin dropped to a six-week low of $76,368 and Ether hit a two-month low of $2,178, while shares in Coinbase fell 4.8%.
Sources: BBC News, Al Jazeera, The Guardian
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