Tether and Circle report $1.5bn and $800m in frozen funds
Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Thursday it is investigating reports of a potential security issue, although the company had not explicitly confirmed that funds had been pilfered. It was not immediately clear how much damage hackers might have been able to accomplish. Changpeng Zhao, the founder who stepped down as CEO in 2023, posted on X that the incident “does look like a hack on Binance.”
A Binance spokesperson said in a statement: “Rest assured that user funds are completely safe.” The company said its security teams were “reviewing all relevant information with urgency” and that it would “provide updates through official Binance channels as soon as we have verified information.”
Cryptocurrency firms had frozen more than $2.5bn in funds by Thursday evening, the company said.
About two hours after its initial disclosure, Binance wrote on its X account that the current verified total of frozen funds was $2.54bn. The exchange said the figure “may continue to increase” as its teams work closely with law enforcement, issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners to trace and freeze additional assets.
Stablecoin providers Tether and Circle each said they froze funds Thursday in response to the incident. Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and chief executive of Circle, wrote on X that the company had frozen more than $800m in currency associated with the incident “in coordination with law enforcement.” Paolo Ardoino, chief executive of Tether, said on X that the company froze the equivalent of more than $1.5bn in currency related to “a potential Binance exchange hack.”
The price of bitcoin dropped 3.2% Thursday afternoon to under $79,000.
Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, who in 2023 pleaded guilty to a felony related to his failure to prevent money laundering on the platform and stepped down as CEO. Donald Trump pardoned him in 2025.
Zhao posted on X on Thursday that “User funds are safe!” but added that the incident “does look like a hack on Binance.” He said that while he doesn’t manage Binance anymore, “as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered.”