The world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, says around $6.3billion (£4.7billion) worth of digital assets have been affected by ‘the largest hack in history’.

Binance has said roughly half of the assets had been frozen, but a significant amount remained in the hands of the suspected hackers.

The company has promised to ‘cover all losses’ caused by the incident, which it believes may have involved an engineer’s compromised laptop being used to make unauthorised withdrawals.

Two cryptocurrency analytics firms have linked the attack to a North Korean hacking group known as TraderTraitor.

TRM Labs said several details appeared similar to previous attacks allegedly carried out by North Korean hackers, including the record-breaking $1.5billion (£1.1billion) theft from crypto exchange Bybit in 2025.

Ari Redbord, global head of policy at TRM Labs, described the Binance incident as a ‘watershed moment’ unlike anything the industry had seen before.

He warned that the attacker still appeared to control a huge amount of the affected assets, meaning efforts to track down and recover the money were far from over.

Another analytics firm, Chainalysis, said it had ‘high confidence’ that the North Korean group was linked to the incident.

Its head of research, Eric Jardine, urged other cryptocurrency exchanges to remain on alert, warning that platforms were attractive targets because of the enormous amounts of money they hold.

Binance has not directly confirmed whether North Korea was involved, but said it was working with law enforcement.

‘We are working closely with our law enforcement partners to confirm the identity of these criminals and bring them to justice,’ the company said.

Binance co-chief executive Yi He thanked cryptocurrency issuers for helping to freeze the affected funds.

She also confirmed that withdrawals had been temporarily suspended while the exchange checked that its systems were secure.

‘Safety first: withdrawals are currently disabled until the environment is confirmed to be secure,’ she said.

Other major cryptocurrency companies have also taken action.

Stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle said they had frozen around $2.4billion (£1.8billion) in assets linked to the potential hack.

Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire said his company had frozen more than $800million (£600million) and was ‘closely tracking reports of a potential exploit involving Binance’.

World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency company linked to US President Donald Trump and his family, also said it had worked with partners to freeze stolen funds.

Concerns about a possible security breach at Binance had been raised by several people in the cryptocurrency industry hours before the company confirmed the incident.

Founded in China in 2017, Binance allows users to buy, sell and trade digital currencies and is estimated to have more than 300 million registered users worldwide.

News of the incident has sent cryptocurrency prices tumbling, with Bitcoin falling by more than 4%. Ethereum and Solana also suffered sharp falls.