Binance investigates potential hack as crypto firms freeze 2.5 billion dollars

Binance, the largest cryptocurrency exchange in the world, announced on Thursday that it is investigating reports of a potential security issue. The Guardian reported that the company founder said the incident does look like a hack on Binance. The company noted that the extent of the damages was not immediately known, and it had not explicitly confirmed whether funds were stolen. [1]

According to the Guardian, cryptocurrency firms had frozen more than 2.5 billion dollars in funds by Thursday evening. Stablecoin issuers quickly acted to freeze funds as news of the potential breach surfaced, although it was not immediately clear how much damage the attackers had accomplished. [1]

Cryptocurrency security concerns follow other recent major exchange breaches. As FTMQ News reported earlier, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis linked a 387 million dollar heist at the Bitget exchange to North Korean hackers earlier in October 2026. That attack pushed total stolen cryptocurrency attributed to North Korea past 1 billion dollars for the year. [4]