Binance said Friday that about $6.3 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen from the exchange, a figure The Verge described as the largest known crypto hack on record¹. The Japan Times likewise reported a $6.3 billion record theft that analysts pinned on North Korea².

The Verge, citing Binance posts on X, said the company reported user funds are safe, deposits and withdrawals were suspended, and about $3 billion of the impacted assets had been frozen¹. The Japan Times said Binance halted withdrawals, said it would cover the losses, and that about half the stolen assets were quickly frozen by stablecoin issuers including Tether, Circle and World Liberty Financial².

Binance pledged to cover losses, The Verge reported, and said it reserved more than $6.34 billion of company funds, including $5 billion already held in the same token assets that were hit, on top of an emergency reserve last valued around $1.3 billion¹. The Japan Times noted Binance runs a secure asset fund for users described on its website as a $1 billion bitcoin reserve².

The exchange initially pointed to a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer that let an attacker reach a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawals, then said later investigation found additional points of breach, according to The Verge¹. Co-CEO Richard Teng said the attacker did not simply use one engineer’s permissions and that so far there was no evidence of a wallet private key leak¹. The Japan Times quoted Binance saying the attack was complex and that it was coordinating with law enforcement².

The Verge reported that blockchain analysis firms TRM and Chainalysis attributed the theft to TraderTraitor, a North Korean cybercrime group, and that TRM said most of the theft occurred over about 20 minutes¹. Binance has not publicly named a culprit, The Verge said¹. The Japan Times said analysts pinned the theft on North Korea without naming those firms in the portion of the report available here².

The Verge noted Binance was hacked in 2019, when about $40 million in crypto was stolen at then-prices, and said TRM compared the new figure as about four times the $1.46 billion Bybit theft last year¹. The two accounts still differ on freeze mechanics: The Verge’s $3 billion figure versus The Japan Times’ “about half” frozen by named stablecoin issuers^1,2. What remains unknown from these accounts is a full forensic timeline and whether governments will formally attribute the attack^1,2.