Cryptocurrency exchange Binance said it has frozen more than $2.5 billion in assets related to a cyber attack. Meanwhile, Chainalysis's initial estimate shows that the amount of stolen digital assets could reach nearly 5.9 billion USD.

At around 7:30 a.m. on October 30 Vietnam time, Binance announced to temporarily suspend all deposit and withdrawal activities to check security, freeze assets and coordinate with law enforcement agencies.

According to Binance, the number of frozen assets may continue to increase as the company coordinates with authorities, cryptocurrency issuers, blockchain data analytics units and industry partners to trace and block the flow of money related to the case.

To date, Binance and industry experts have not announced the specific method hackers used to carry out the intrusion.

On social network X, Binance affirmed that users' assets are still safe and committed to compensating for all damages. However, the actual scale of the attack has not yet been determined.

Blockchain data analysis company Chainalysis estimated the value of stolen digital assets at the time of the incident to be about $5.912 billion.

If confirmed, this will be one of the most damaging attacks in the history of the cryptocurrency market, far surpassing the theft of about 1.5 billion USD from the Bybit exchange in February 2025.

Meanwhile, blockchain security firm Blockaid discovered about $3.3 billion in suspicious transactions involving Binance-linked wallets on the Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Avalanche networks.

Two major stablecoin issuers, Tether and Circle, have also frozen a total of more than $2.3 billion in related digital assets. Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said the company froze more than 800 million USDC. Then Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino announced that he had blocked about 1.6 billion USDT related to potential security vulnerabilities.

USDT and USDC are two stablecoins designed to maintain a value equivalent to the USD, thereby limiting price fluctuations compared to many other cryptocurrencies.

The US Department of Justice and the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have not commented on the case.

News of the attack also put pressure on the cryptocurrency market. Around 0:25 GMT on October 30, Bitcoin fell nearly 5%, Ethereum lost nearly 6%, while BNB, the cryptocurrency belonging to the Binance ecosystem, fell nearly 10%. Most other major cryptocurrencies also went down, with the exception of stablecoins.

The incident took place amid growing concerns about the risk that artificial intelligence (AI) models with ever-expanding capabilities could create new challenges for encryption methods and information technology security systems, including in the field of digital assets.

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