Crypto giant Binance says it has covered 90% of losses after North Korea-linked hackers stole $6.3bn in a 20-minute raid
Binance halted all withdrawals after a hack through a single engineer's laptop drained an estimated $6.3bn — surpassing the previous record $1.5bn Bybit breach in 2025.Kim Jong Un, whose country's TraderTraitor unit carried out the Binance raid using access gained through a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, according to investigators.
Binance has ringfenced more than $6.34bn of its own money to reimburse affected customers, committing to absorb every loss itself. The outstanding 10% comprises less-liquid tokens that could take more time to acquire at the volumes needed, the company said. Withdrawals are on track to reopen on Sunday 1 November.
North Korean hacking unit TraderTraitor executed the raid in roughly 20 minutes, using a self-destruct mechanism to cover its tracks.
Stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether froze $2.4bn within an hour of the attack; the US Secret Service says it is working around the clock to recover funds.
Binance co-CEO Richard Teng says investigators have since uncovered 'additional points of breach' beyond the initial compromised engineer's laptop.
