Binance freezes $2.5 billion in assets after suspected hack and promises to cover losses
Broker suspends deposits and withdrawals during checks and says users' funds are safe; bitcoin fell about 5%.
BY THE X-TRADER NEWS NEWSROOM · REPORTING FROM BBC BUSINESS · 2 MIN
Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, has frozen more than $2.5 billion (£1.87 billion) in digital assets to prevent theft during an investigation into a security issue, according to BBC Business.
While the case is being investigated, the company has temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals to carry out security checks. She also stated that she will cover all losses. According to Money Times, the investigation concerns a possible hacker attack that would have affected billions of dollars on Thursday, and the company says that users' funds are safe.
Changpeng Zhao, former boss and majority shareholder of Binance, said the episode looks like a hack. According to him, Tether and Circle froze around $1.7 billion in stolen assets. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the company has frozen more than $800 million linked to the incident. Circle issued and co-created USDC, one of the largest dollar-backed stablecoins.
The case brings into focus the relationship between brokers, stablecoin issuers and law enforcement authorities. Binance says the frozen value could increase and that it is working with authorities to trace and seize the assets. In other words, the reaction was not limited to the platform itself, but also involved issuers that maintain the sector's liquidity.
The market reacted quickly. After the warnings, bitcoin fell around 5%, and ethereum and solana also fell sharply, according to BBC Business. Money Times reported that the emergency freezes and alleged hack caused cryptocurrency prices to plummet.
Binance also urged users to be cautious. In a post on the X network, the company said that its security teams are urgently investigating reports of a possible problem and advised that no one trust links, messages or requests for account data that are not official. The company promised a full post-mortem report at the end of the investigation.
What changes for the investor
For those who invest in crypto, the episode reinforces a point of attention: custody in centralized brokerages depends on the operational security of each platform, and an incident of this size tends to increase the perception of risk in the sector. The immediate drop in prices showed this sensitivity. Still, the extent of the impact will depend on what the investigation finds and the content of the report promised by Binance, and there is no way to anticipate, based on the available facts, the price trajectory.
Automatically translated from Portuguese.
