Crypto firms freeze more than $3bn in funds as Binance investigates potential hack

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Thursday it is investigating reports of a potential security issue as its founder said the incident “does look like a hack on Binance”.

It wasn’t immediately clear the extent of the damage hackers might have been able to accomplish and Binance had not explicitly confirmed that funds had been pilfered, but stablecoin issuers quickly froze funds Thursday evening.

“Rest assured that user funds are completely safe,” a Binance spokesperson said in a statement.

“Our security teams are reviewing all relevant information with urgency, and we will provide updates through official Binance channels as soon as we have verified information,” the statement continued.

Stablecoin providers Tether and Circle each said they froze funds Thursday in response to the incident.

Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, wrote on X that the company had frozen more than an equivalent of $800m in currency associated with the incident “in coordination with law enforcement”. Paolo Ardoino, the CEO 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.