Binance pledges to cover all losses from 6.3bn security incident

Crypto holders around the world started Friday doing something that never feels good: opening their apps to check that their money is still there, Joburg Etc reports.

The reason is the Binance hack. Attackers have made off with an estimated $6.3bn (about R104.77bn) from the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange. Industry experts say it is the largest crypto theft on record. ‘It’s the biggest hack in history,’ said Aravind Srinivasan of market maker GSR.

What we know so far

According to blockchain analytics firm TRM Labs, the attackers hit Binance wallets across ten blockchains and moved most of the money in about 20 minutes. TRM and Chainalysis have pointed the finger at North Korea.

TRM said several features of the attack match earlier heists linked to Pyongyang, including the 2025 Bybit hack that the FBI attributed to North Korea. ‘We make this judgment with high confidence,’ TRM said. North Korea’s mission in Geneva and its embassy in China had not responded to requests for comment at the time of reporting.

How did they get in? Binance’s early investigation suggests a compromised laptop belonging to a DevOps engineer. That let an attacker reach a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawals. A Binance spokesperson said: ‘We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak.’ A full technical post-mortem is promised once the facts are verified.

The pledge

Binance says it will make users whole. In a statement attributed to a spokesperson, the exchange said: ‘Binance will cover all losses from the SAFU fund and the company’s funds.’ Co-founder Yi He has also said the exchange will cover ‘all hacking losses’. Binance adds that user funds are safe and deposits are unaffected.

That is reassuring, but it is still a promise. About $3bn has been frozen so far, with help from Tether, Circle, Ripple and others.

As an immediate precaution, Binance has:

• Temporarily suspended withdrawals while our team completes a security revamp of the withdrawal service and its related addresses.
• Revoked the affected address authorisation.
• Engaged law enforcement and blockchain intelligence partners to trace and recover funds.

The market flinched

Markets reacted quickly in Asian trading. Bitcoin slipped more than 3% to a six-week low of $76,368, and ether fell to a two-month low of $2,178. Binance’s own BNB token dropped 5%. Coinbase shares slid 4.8%.

Why this matters in Mzansi

Crypto isn’t a fringe hobby here any more. South Africa’s financial regulator formally classed crypto assets as a financial product in 2022, and plenty of people in this country trade, save or send money across borders using digital assets. You may never have opened a Binance account, but the shockwaves reach local platforms too. When confidence in the biggest exchange wobbles, prices and nerves everywhere wobble with it.

Binance has 335 million registered users worldwide and held about $162.8bn in customer assets, according to its 2025 annual report. That is a lot of people trusting one company.

Not our first heist

This isn’t a one-off. Attackers stole about $2.9bn in crypto across nearly 150 attacks last year, according to TRM Labs, and Bitget said in September that around $350m had been taken from its platform.

Industry voices are worried about where this leads. ‘It’s becoming very hard to counter hacks as AI can find vulnerabilities faster than you can fix them,’ said Bernardo Brites, CEO of Trace Finance. He expects users to drift away from smaller exchanges. ‘[It is] becoming too risky to park your money somewhere that couldn’t cover a hack of meaningful size,’ he said.

HashKey Group’s Tim Sun said the breach may ‘prompt investors to reassess the safety of assets held on centralised exchanges.’

For all the talk of vaults and cold wallets, the weak link here may have been one ordinary laptop. That is the part worth sitting with. Your crypto is only as safe as the least protected device that can touch it.

There are a few sensible steps. Don’t panic-move funds on a rumour. Turn on two-factor authentication and treat unexpected messages about your account with suspicion. Binance.US and Coinbase have both said they were not affected.