{"id":245818,"date":"2026-10-30T14:13:15","date_gmt":"2026-10-30T14:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=245818"},"modified":"2026-10-30T14:13:15","modified_gmt":"2026-10-30T14:13:15","slug":"blockchain-firms-link-north-korea-to-6-3-billion-binance-hack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/?p=245818","title":{"rendered":"Blockchain Firms Link North Korea to $6.3 Billion Binance Hack\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin Magazine<\/a><\/p>\n

Blockchain Firms Link North Korea to $6.3 Billion Binance Hack\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Blockchain analysis firms Chainalysis and TRM Labs have linked<\/a> the $6.3 billion Binance hack yesterday to TraderTraitor, a unit associated with North Korea. If confirmed at this scale, the theft would be the largest crypto hack on record.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Chainalysis puts the total at $6.4 billion in its own assessment. Chainalysis says funds began leaving Binance hot wallets across multiple blockchains around 4:20 p.m. Eastern Time on October 29.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The firm said the attacker used an operational wallet funded through Tornado Cash to submit signed authorizations that allowed a Binance hot wallet to run attacker-deployed code.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The attacker then swept assets into addresses under its control. Binance has said<\/a> its initial investigation points to a compromised engineer\u2019s laptop, which gave an attacker access to a service container and enabled unauthorized withdrawals.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The exchange said it has found no evidence<\/a> of a wallet private key leak.<\/p>\n

The attacker reportedly tried to outpace freezes by converting stablecoins into ether and other assets that issuers cannot freeze. Chainalysis said the attacker swapped $325 million in stablecoins into $285 million in ETH over roughly 20 minutes, then sent the remaining $175 million to stopover wallets. Freezes began by 5:14 p.m. Eastern, according to the firm.<\/p>\n

Market reacts to the hack<\/h2>\n

Bitcoin dropped toward $76,000 on Friday morning before trading near $77,400. Other crypto followed suit and posted declines of their own. Total market liquidations reached $1.5 billion, with bitcoin accounting for $468 million and ether for $358 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Long positions, which bet on higher prices, bore most of the losses. The sell-off coincided with a separate incident<\/a> at decentralized betting platform Polymarket, which suspended international trading after hackers drained more than $2.6 million from user accounts.<\/p>\n

Binance said Thursday that the security incident affected about $6.3 billion in assets, surpassing the $1.5 billion Bybit hack of 2025, which was attributed to North Korean hackers. Former CEO Changpeng Zhao wrote on X, \u201cIt does look like a hack.\u201d Zhao no longer runs the exchange but remains a key shareholder.<\/p>\n

Stablecoin issuers moved to contain the fallout. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company froze more than $1.567 billion in USDT and that protecting the industry and its partners is its main priority.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Circle co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire said Circle froze more than $800 million in USDC in coordination with law enforcement. First Digital CEO Vincent Chok said FDUSD stolen in the attack has been frozen. Binance says about $3 billion has been frozen onchain in total.<\/p>\n

Binance has enough funds to cover the incident<\/h2>\n

Binance says<\/a> it has reserved more than $6.34 billion of company funds to cover the incident. About $5 billion of that reserve is held in the same token assets that were affected, and the company is buying the remainder through market and OTC channels.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The exchange says frozen and protected assets remain subject to verification and plans to publish an updated Proof of Reserves.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reuters<\/em>, citing a person familiar with the matter, reported<\/a> that Binance is working with the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin may have further downside<\/h2>\n

Standard Chartered\u2019s global head of digital assets research, Geoffrey Kendrick, wrote in an email<\/a> to CoinDesk<\/em> that the negative price action may have some way to go. He said a new base will form after assets are unfrozen and more details of the hack emerge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Kendrick argued that the incident could accelerate a shift toward decentralized exchanges. Chainalysis has warned that scammers are impersonating the firm, including those offering fund recovery and recruiting services.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Victims should treat unsolicited recovery offers with caution and rely on official channels for updates. <\/p>\n

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading near $76,700.<\/p>\n

This post Blockchain Firms Link North Korea to $6.3 Billion Binance Hack\u00a0<\/a> first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine<\/a> and is written by Micah Zimmerman<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bitcoin Magazine Blockchain Firms Link North Korea to $6.3 Billion Binance Hack\u00a0 Blockchain analysis firms Chainalysis and TRM Labs have linked the $6.3 billion Binance hack yesterday to TraderTraitor, a unit associated with North Korea. If confirmed at this scale, the theft would be the largest crypto hack on record.\u00a0 Chainalysis puts the total at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":245819,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-245818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-discovery"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245818"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=245818"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245818\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/245819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=245818"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=245818"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mycryptomania.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=245818"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}