North Korea Accused of $6.3 Billion Binance Hack, Market Tumbles

Binance hack — Blockchain firms Chainalysis and TRM Labs have linked a massive $6.3 billion hack of Binance to a North Korean cyber unit known as TraderTraitor, marking what would be the largest crypto theft on record.

The attack, which began on October 29, saw funds drained from Binance hot wallets across multiple blockchains. The attacker reportedly used a wallet funded via Tornado Cash to deploy malicious code, enabling unauthorized withdrawals. Binance’s initial investigation points to a compromised engineer’s laptop as the entry point, with no evidence of a private key leak.

Stablecoin issuers, including Tether and Circle, moved swiftly to freeze over $2.3 billion in assets combined, with Binance stating a total of about $3 billion has been frozen on-chain. The exchange has reserved over $6.34 billion in company funds to cover the incident.

The hack triggered a sharp market sell-off, with Bitcoin briefly dropping toward $76,000 and total market liquidations reaching $1.5 billion. Analysts warn the negative price action may persist as the situation develops.