Binance Halts Withdrawals After Record $6.3 Billion Crypto Heist
Seven Lights
Binance halted withdrawals after the exchange’s founder said approximately $6.3 billion had been taken in what is being described as the largest cryptocurrency heist on record. The Financial Times reported the suspension of withdrawals under the headline “Binance halts withdrawals after record $6.3bn heist,” and Forbes reported that the company said $6.3 billion was impacted and that it had suspended withdrawals.
The exchange’s founder said the company may have been the victim of the biggest crypto heist ever, the Wall Street Journal reported. Fortune, publishing an account of what is known so far, called it the biggest crypto heist in history. Bloomberg’s markets programme led its coverage the same morning under the heading “Crypto Rocked by Biggest Heist on Record.”
Prices of digital assets fell as the news spread. Bitcoin changed hands at $78,398, down 1.79 per cent; Ethereum fell 2.61 per cent to $2,248.87; XRP lost 2.29 per cent to $1.26; and Dogecoin slipped 2.17 per cent to $0.08, according to Fortune’s market data. The declines were broad rather than confined to tokens tied to the exchange, an indication that traders read the theft as a fresh warning about the security of large crypto platforms.
Details of how the funds were taken, and where they went, had not been made public. The halt on withdrawals is the industry’s standard emergency measure, intended to stop a run on the exchange while the loss is traced and accounted for. What remains is the question of whether Binance can cover customer balances, and how much of the stolen value can be recovered.
The sum exceeds any previous loss in the industry’s chronicle of breaches and exchange failures. Investigators, auditors and regulators were expected to spend days establishing the method of the theft and the path of the funds. Until that accounting is complete, the exchange’s customers can move nothing out.