NEW YORK, United States — Cryptocurrency platform Binance said Thursday it had fallen victim to a major hack that had resulted in the freezing of more than $2.5 billion in an effort to prevent them from being stolen.
The company -- the world's largest crypto exchange by daily trading volumes -- said it had suspended trading on certain products.
It nevertheless insisted: "User funds are completely safe."
Several experts said it looked like a massive amount of assets had been stolen.
"It does look like a hack on Binance," said former Binance chief Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the group but remains a majority shareholder.
Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether -- a company that issues a cryptocurrency known as USDT -- said his firm froze about $1.6 billion "related to a potential Binance exchange hack."
Circle boss Jeremy Allaire said his company had frozen more than $800 million in USDC.
USDT and USDC are both "stablecoins," or digital currencies whose value is linked to a traditional currency, the US dollar.
For several hours before Binance confirmed the attack, several industry observers said hackers had managed to reach the platform.
Some said it could be the biggest-ever cyberattack of its kind, with a haul exceeding the $1.5 billion stolen in February 2025 from the Bybit platform -- an incident attributed to hackers affiliated with North Korea.
Bitcoin prices fell more than three percent on the news.
