Reuters reported that Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced on Thursday, October 29 that it had frozen three billion dollars in cryptocurrency assets following an investigation into a possible security breach. Tie and Circle companies have also frozen the assets related to this event. Binance's founders said the company would compensate "all losses resulting from the hack," but did not provide further details on the amount of assets that may have been stolen. Binance also emphasized that users' assets are safe and withdrawals will resume after security checks are completed.
Binance co-founder and former CEO Changfeng Zhao wrote on X that the incident "looks like a hack." Blockchain analysis firm Chain Analysis also announced that if initial estimates are confirmed, this attack could be the largest cryptocurrency theft ever recorded.
"Tie" blocked nearly $1.57 billion and "Circle" more than $800 million of assets related to this event. World Liberty Financial, a company linked to Donald Trump and his family, also announced that it has partnered with cryptocurrency custodian Bitgo to freeze the stolen assets. According to Yi He, $27 million worth of stablecoins and about $2 million worth of World Liberty tokens have been frozen. Ripple also blocked about $200 million in assets.
Binance announced that it is working with law enforcement authorities, token issuers and blockchain analytics companies to track and block additional assets, and there is a possibility that the number of blocked assets will increase to three billion dollars. The news of a possible security breach also affected the cryptocurrency market. Bitcoin fell about 2% in early trading Friday to $77,646, a six-week low. Ethereum also fell by about two percent and reached $2,238. The value of the BNB token also dropped by more than eight percent in 24 hours.
Data suggests that billions of dollars in Binance assets may have been stolen by an unknown actor, although the exact cause of the incident has yet to be confirmed, Reuters reported, citing Miguel Moral, CEO of blockchain analytics company Arcam.