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Crypto exchange Binance reports $6.3 billion breach, analytics firms blame North Korea

Binance says about $3 billion is frozen and it will cover all losses, but it has not confirmed who was behind the attack.

25 news outlets reported this
Liberal10 outletsCenter11 outletsConservative4 outlets
Published 4 min readMoney and daily life
Overview

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced on Thursday, Oct. 29, that a breach had hit roughly $6.3 billion in assets. Outlets describe it as likely the biggest crypto theft on record, well above the $1.5 billion taken from Bybit in 2025. Binance said it worked with partners to freeze about $3 billion.

Stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle said they froze nearly $1.57 billion and more than $800 million. Binance suspended withdrawals during security checks and says it will cover all losses. Its first findings pointed to a compromised engineer's laptop that let an attacker make unauthorized withdrawals.

A later statement cited additional points of breach. Analytics firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis tied the attack to TraderTraitor, a North Korean hacking unit, and TRM said it made that judgment with high confidence. Binance says it is working with law enforcement to confirm who the attackers are.

Binance.US, a separate exchange, said it was not affected. Bitcoin fell roughly 3% to 5%, with several reports putting it near $77,000. Co-founder Changpeng Zhao, who stepped down as CEO in 2023 and says he no longer manages the company, wrote that the incident "does look like a hack on Binance."

Three sides of the story

Liberal10 outlets

Left-leaning outlets treat the breach as a record event with wide effects on crypto. The Guardian, with Reuters and AP material, quotes analysts on possible fallout for centralized exchanges and repeats Binance's statements that user funds are safe. CBS News focuses on North Korea.

It reports that TRM Labs attributed the attack to TraderTraitor with high confidence, gives background on the group and the Bybit theft, and notes Binance found no evidence of a wallet private key leak. ABC News, carrying AP copy, adds that Zhao was sentenced to prison for violating the Bank Secrecy Act and later received a Trump pardon. It also says Zhao and Binance have backed some Trump family crypto ventures.

NBC News reports Binance set aside $5 billion for affected users. It places the hack against the backdrop of the Clarity Act's failure in Congress over conflict-of-interest rules involving Trump, who disclosed more than $1 billion in crypto earnings last year. NBC also describes the exchange between Elon Musk and Zhao.

Center11 outlets

Centrist outlets build the story around Binance's statements, analytics firms and market estimates. The BBC reports Binance said about half the assets were frozen, quotes TRM Labs' Ari Redbord calling it a "watershed moment", and notes North Korea has denied involvement in past hacks. Axios cites analyst estimates of $1.7 billion to $5.7 billion taken, places the event after what has been called "Black October," and quotes a trading-firm co-founder who says Binance's size leaves it better able to absorb a loss.

UPI gives TRM's timeline, including a second wave of transfers about three hours later, plus Chainalysis figures on North Korean thefts and the U.S. Treasury's view of how Pyongyang uses such money. Straight Arrow News reports, citing the Journal, that two research firms point to Lazarus Group, and relays Binance's laptop explanation and its suspension of transactions.

Conservative4 outlets

Right-leaning outlets stress North Korea's role and the growing use of artificial intelligence in cybercrime. The Daily Caller says North Korean hackers allegedly took about $6.3 billion. It cites TRM Labs on the 20-minute drain and on test transactions that began at least 36 hours earlier, and it devotes much of its report to Microsoft and Google findings about North Korean groups using AI.

It adds that investigators have not established that AI played a role in this attack. Breitbart, drawing on Axios and CNN, lists Binance's own disclosures step by step and reports that Chainalysis, TRM Labs and Pangolin Intelligence all point to North Korea. The New York Post's explainer quotes Blockaid CEO Ido Ben-Natan, who says he would not rule out an inside job but thinks the hackers most likely used AI, and it describes how hackers launder funds.

A separate Post report quotes an insider calling the theft "the largest bank heist in human history" and says Binance has begun recovering some assets and expects withdrawals within two days.

Money and daily life

For Binance customers, withdrawals were suspended after the breach. Binance says it will make users whole for any losses and describes their money as safe. CBS News and the New York Post report withdrawals are expected to resume within a day or two. Several outlets report bitcoin fell roughly 3% to 5%, which lowers the value of crypto holdings.

All sources: 59 articles from 25 outlets

Liberal (20)

Center (28)

Conservative (11)

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