Binance suspends deposits, withdrawals after $6.3 billion security incident; delays token listing

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals following a security incident that had a total impact of around $6.3 billion, the company said on Friday.

Binance's initial investigation suggests the incident may have involved a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, allowing an attacker to gain access to a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions.

“We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak,” the company said. “We will share a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation is complete and the facts are fully verified.”

Binance said it had worked with blockchain partners to freeze affected assets, with around $3 billion frozen on-chain so far.

The company said it would cover all losses using its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and its own funds.

"User funds are safe," Binance said. "As an immediate precaution, Binance has temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while security checks are completed."

Binance also revoked the authorisation associated with the affected address and engaged law enforcement agencies and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover the funds.

"We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice," it added.

The trading start time for Predict, originally scheduled for 10:00 am GMT on Friday, has been postponed until further notice, Binance said in a separate announcement.

The incident rattled cryptocurrency markets, with bitcoin falling more than 3% to a six-week low of $76,368 and ether dropping more than 3% to a two-month low of $2,178.

BNB, a token originally launched as Binance Coin that can be used to pay trading fees on the exchange, fell 5% over the previous 24 hours to $709.70, according to market aggregator CoinGecko.

Shares in cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase Global slid 4.8%, while those of bitcoin-buying company Strategy fell nearly 6% in extended US trading.