{"id":26717,"date":"2026-10-30T05:18:43","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T05:18:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/10\/30\/crypto-worth-billions-frozen-after-suspected-binance-hack-bbc\/"},"modified":"2026-10-30T05:18:43","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T05:18:43","slug":"crypto-worth-billions-frozen-after-suspected-binance-hack-bbc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/2026\/10\/30\/crypto-worth-billions-frozen-after-suspected-binance-hack-bbc\/","title":{"rendered":"Crypto worth billions frozen after suspected Binance hack &#8211; BBC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Cryptocurrency giant Binance said on Thursday that $6.3bn (\u00a34.7bn) of digital assets have been impacted by what has been described as the &quot;largest hack in history&quot;.<br \/>The world&#x27;s biggest crypto exchange said about half of those assets have been frozen with the help of other platforms, adding that it will &quot;cover all losses&quot;.<br \/>Early checks show the incident may have involved an engineer&#x27;s laptop that had been compromised, which allowed an attacker to make unauthorised withdrawals, Binance said.<br \/>Two analytics firms have attributed the incident, which eclipses a <a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/news\/articles\/c2kgndwwd7lo\" class=\"LinkUrl-styles__LinkUrlStyled-sc-f4e3b82f-0 eGAhOs\">record-setting $1.5bn hack on the Bybit exchange in 2025<\/a>, to a North Korean hacking unit called TraderTraitor.<br \/>AI-powered investigations company TRM Labs said in a report that several elements of the Binance attack resemble earlier North Korean-linked incidents, including the Bybit hack.<br \/>The lab&#x27;s global head of policy Ari Redbord told the BBC the Binance hack is a &quot;watershed moment&quot; that is unlike anything the industry has seen.<br \/>The attacker still holds an enormous sum of stolen assets, meaning efforts to trace and recover the funds are far from over, Redbord added.<br \/>Chainalysis, another crypto analytics firm, also said it has &quot;high confidence&quot; that the North Korean group are linked to the hack.<br \/>Eric Jardine, Chainalysis&#x27; Head of Research, urged every exchange to remain vigilant as the platforms are attractive targets for hackers due to the sheer value of assets.<br \/>Binance did not directly respond to BBC queries about the incident&#x27;s potential links to North Korea but said: &quot;We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice.&quot;<br \/>The incident concerns Binance.com &#8211; while much smaller crypto platform Binance.US, which provides trading services specifically for American residents &#8211; said its platform is not affected by the issue.<br \/>In a series of posts, Yi He, Binance&#x27;s co-chief executive, thanked various cryptocurrency issuers for freezing the assets.<br \/>&quot;Safety first: withdrawals are currently disabled until the environment is confirmed to be secure,&quot; she said.<br \/>Two other major crypto platforms, Tether and Circle, said they have frozen a total of about $2.4bn of assets in response to the potential Binance hack.<br \/>Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire said his firm is &quot;closely tracking reports of a potential exploit involving Binance&quot; and that his company has frozen more than $800m in assets linked to the incident.  <br \/>Circle is the issuer and co-creator of the USDC, one of the world&#x27;s largest US dollar-backed cryptocurrencies.<br \/>Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said his firm has frozen around $1.6bn &quot;related to a potential Binance exchange hack.&quot;<br \/>&quot;Protecting the industry and our partners is our main priority,&quot; said Ardoino, whose company issues a cryptocurrency known as USDT.<br \/>World Liberty Financial, a crypto company linked to US President Donald Trump and his family, said it has worked with its partners to freeze stolen funds.<br \/>Crypto exchange Coinbase said it was unaffected by the incident and was monitoring the situation.<br \/>Several crypto industry observers had flagged concerns about a potential hack on Binance hours before the exchange confirmed the security issue.<br \/>Binance, which was founded in China in 2017, allows users to trade digital assets and is estimated to have more than 300 million registered users worldwide.<br \/>The exchange has been subject of regulatory scrutiny around the world.<br \/>The company said in 2024 that it has more than $160bn in assets under custody. <br \/>Bitcoin dropped by more than 4% following the alerts. The price of other major cryptocurrencies including Ethereum and Solana also fell sharply.<br \/>Prosecutors had accused Pleterski of stealing tens of millions of dollars of investor funds to buy himself a range of luxuries.<br \/>Police say Faisa Ali used cash from unsuspecting investors for jewellery, homeware and fast food.<br \/>Javier Milei had denied acting fraudulently when a cryptocurrency nosedived after he deleted a social media post about it.<br \/>AI uncovered long-hidden programming flaws, triggering a rare global cyber-security response.<br \/>Copyright 2026 BBC. All rights reserved. The BBC is not responsible for the content of external sites.\u00a0<a target=\"_self\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.com\/editorialguidelines\/guidance\/links-and-feeds\" class=\"LinkUrl-styles__LinkUrlStyled-sc-f4e3b82f-0 eGAhOs\"><b id=\"read-about-our-approach-to-external-linking.\" class=\"TextFragment-styles__TextFragmentStyled-sc-99e7c69b-0 fa-DACi\">Read about our approach to external linking.<\/b><\/a><br \/>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/rss\/articles\/CBMiW0FVX3lxTE9ocUpaWWozVHpsR0I5N0xtb0dNdlFJUWRiWWJYN2xoY2NOS3E0MzJxdFpMS29xU20yd3Mtc0c2dmtfU1FTa3BBZF8zY3BvYndzRnBnY3NXSEl3d0U?oc=5\">source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Cryptocurrency giant Binance said on Thursday that $6.3bn (\u00a34.7bn) of digital assets have been impacted by what has been described as the &quot;largest hack in history&quot;.The world&#x27;s biggest crypto exchange said about half of those assets have been frozen with the help of other platforms, adding that it will &quot;cover all losses&quot;.Early checks show the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26718,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnewstoday.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}