Updated October 30, 2026,  This is a developing story and figures may change.

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, said Friday that an attack on its systems affected roughly $6.3 billion in funds, which would make it the largest crypto theft on record. The company warned the total could rise as its teams continue tracing the losses.

U.S. agencies reportedly involved

A person familiar with the matter told Reuters that Binance is working with law enforcement worldwide, including the FBI and the U.S. Secret Service. Binance’s own statements did not name either agency. The FBI said in a statement that it is aware of the incident and is engaged with public and private partners to understand its scope and coordinate investigative steps. The Secret Service did not respond to an emailed request for comment sent outside U.S. business hours.

What Binance says happened

Binance said its preliminary investigation points to a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer. According to the company, that gave an unauthorized party access to a service container, which was then used to submit unauthorized withdrawals. The investigation is ongoing, and these findings are preliminary.

Funds frozen, losses to be covered

Binance said about $3 billion of the affected assets have been frozen. Tether said it froze nearly $1.57 billion linked to the incident, and Circle said it froze more than $800 million. Binance said it has set aside about $6.34 billion in company funds to cover losses. “Your money is safe and we’re covering every loss,” co-CEO Richard Teng wrote on X.

Binance also halted withdrawals, and crypto prices fell broadly. BNB, the exchange’s native token, dropped nearly 10 percent.

North Korea link is unconfirmed

Analysts have pointed to North Korea. Blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs said the attackers appeared to order Binance wallets to empty into hacker-controlled addresses, a method that mirrors the 2025 Bybit theft, which the FBI attributed to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group. No authority has publicly attributed the Binance attack so far.

Binance has about 335 million registered users and held roughly $162.8 billion in customer assets as of its 2025 annual report. Abu Dhabi’s Financial Services Regulatory Authority, which issued the exchange’s main operating license, said it is engaging closely with Binance and monitoring the incident.

Sources: Reuters (via Investing.com and Business Insurance); AFP (via Yahoo Finance); GV Wire