BNB Down 8%, Bitcoin at Six-Week Low After Binance Discloses $6.3 Billion Security Incident
Bitcoin fell to a six-week low of $77,646 and BNB dropped more than 8% after Binance disclosed a security incident with an estimated $6.3 billion impact.
Binance said on Friday that a security incident with an estimated total impact of around $6.3 billion sent Bitcoin to a six-week low and knocked BNB down more than 8% as investors weighed the largest exchange breach on record.
In a post on X, the exchange said its initial investigation suggests the incident “may involve a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, which allowed an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorized withdrawal transactions.” The company said it has found no evidence of any wallet private key leak.
The price moves followed the disclosure on Thursday of the breach, which hit exchange wallets on Ethereum and other EVM chains as well as Bitcoin, TRON, XRP and Solana. In early Asian trading Friday, Bitcoin fell roughly 2% to $77,646, a six-week low. Ether dropped about 2% to $2,238.76, a two-month low. BNB, the token launched by the exchange, slid more than 8% over 24 hours to $694, according to market data cited Friday.
Liquidity was also disrupted. Binance suspended all deposits and withdrawals as a precaution while its security teams run checks, secure wallet infrastructure and trace affected assets, a step that removes a major venue from trading for the moment. The exchange said it has worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with roughly $3 billion frozen on-chain so far, a figure that has been climbing.
Binance moved to contain the sell-side panic by pledging that customers will not pay for the breach. “Users will not bear the financial impact of this incident. Binance will cover all losses,” the company said, committing its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and corporate funds, with an updated proof of reserves to follow once remediation is complete.
Founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer manages the exchange but remains its majority shareholder, wrote on X that the episode “does look like a hack on Binance,” a step further than the company’s own “security incident” wording. On-chain analysts at Nansen called it the biggest exchange hack on record, estimating about $6 billion left Binance wallets within hours. The price damage echoes earlier single-token collapses after protocol failures, including the MANTRA exploit that sent its token down 18%, though this episode hits the market’s largest exchange and its native token at once.
Standard Chartered analysts said the incident could accelerate a shift toward decentralized exchanges. Binance deposits and withdrawals remain suspended while the investigation continues.
