Binance freezes more than US$ 2.5 billion after hacker attack

Binance said on Thursday that it had suffered a major hacker attack, prompting the platform to freeze more than US$ 2.5 billion to prevent the funds from being stolen. For payment and crypto teams, the important bit is not the headline number alone, but the fact that stablecoin issuers and a top-tier exchange moved quickly to freeze assets tied to the incident.

1. Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency trading platform by daily volume, said it suspended trading in certain products and told users that their funds were “completely safe.” The company’s statement followed reports from specialists hours earlier that hackers had accessed the platform, with some warning it could be the largest cyberattack of this kind on record.
2. Changpeng Zhao, Binance’s former chief executive and still its main shareholder, said, “Indeed, it appears to be a hacker attack on Binance.” That matters because it confirms the incident was not just market chatter: the company itself, through its founder, was publicly treating it as a live security event.
3. Paolo Ardoino, chief executive of Tether, said his company froze about US$ 1.6 billion “related to a possible hacker attack” on Binance. Tether issues USDT, the third-largest digital currency by circulating volume, so this was not a side remark; it was a direct control action on a major stablecoin rail.
4. Jeremy Allaire, chief executive of Circle, said his company froze more than US$ 800 million in USDC, the stablecoin it manages. Put together with Tether’s figure, the amount frozen by issuers exceeded US$ 2.4 billion, which is close to Binance’s own estimate of more than US$ 2.5 billion frozen to stop theft.
5. Both USDT and USDC are stablecoins, meaning their value is tied to a traditional currency, in this case the US dollar. For high-risk operators, that is the operational takeaway: when an incident hits a major venue, the response can move from exchange controls to issuer-level freezes very quickly.