The crypto market crashes 3.33% following a reported $5.7 billion Binance hack. Meanwhile, Tether and Circle freeze over $2.3 billion in stolen assets, Binance assures users their funds are safe, and hackers continue moving millions in stolen crypto.
The crypto market crashed 3.33% after the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, suffered one of the biggest hacks in crypto history. According to multiple reports, hackers stole over $5.70 billion worth of assets from the exchange.
The report on X shows that the hack involved $1.44 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) and $875 million worth of Ethereum (ETH). Bybit’s $1.50 billion hack in 2025 was the largest before this incident, but today’s hack has surpassed it by nearly four times.
Following this disturbing incident, the overall crypto market was hit hard. According to CoinMarketCap data, Bitcoin (BTC), Ethereum (ETH), Binance Coin (BNB), XRP, and Solana (SOL) plummeted 5.05%, 5.65%, 8.35%, 7.55%, and 7.25%, respectively.
Amid this, the world’s largest cryptocurrency by market cap, Bitcoin (BTC), fell below $77,000, whereas Ethereum (ETH) dropped below the $2,200 level.
Following this significant $5.70 billion crypto hack, Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company had frozen over 1.567 billion USDT linked to the potential hack. Meanwhile, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said Circle had frozen more than 800 million USDC associated with the incident in coordination with law enforcement.
Following these swift freezes, Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) thanked both companies and said that although he no longer manages Binance, he expects all user funds to be fully covered.
In fact, Aave froze all DAO-operated V3 and V4 markets after the Binance exploiter deposited $60 million worth of USDT and borrowed 19,762 WETH. Recently, Aave risk provider LlamaRisk shared a report stating that the freeze affected a total of 175 V3 reserves across 16 networks and 117 V4 reserves across four networks. Aave said its contracts were unaffected and that it aims to lift the freeze as soon as possible.
Additionally, Binance co-founder Yi He came forward and shared a reassuring post on X, stating, “User funds are safe. Binance will cover all hacking losses. Deposits and withdrawals have been temporarily suspended while the team conducts security checks, freezes funds, and works with law enforcement. A full post-mortem will be shared once the investigation is complete. Please rely only on official Binance channels for updates.”
Despite multiple asset freezes, crypto transaction tracker Lookonchain shared a post on X stating that the Binance hacker had finished dumping $39.63 million worth of UNI, $33.93 million worth of ENA, $31.66 million worth of PEPE, $26.05 million worth of LINK, $14.27 million worth of AAVE, $6.62 million worth of ONDO, and $6.09 million worth of WLD.
According to the post, the hacker swapped all these tokens for 70,480 ETH worth $158.25 million.
Another crypto transaction tracker, Onchain Lens, revealed that the Binance hacker appears to be preparing to launder the stolen funds.
According to the report, the hacker recently transferred 17,260 ETH worth $38.82 million to a new wallet, potentially preparing to launder the funds through Tornado Cash and other crypto mixers.
The attacker still holds a massive 480,720 ETH worth $1.08 billion, which cannot be directly frozen by a centralized issuer.
According to initial reports, hackers compromised a Binance engineer's laptop, gaining access to internal systems used to authorize withdrawals.
Hackers then hijacked a Binance hot wallet using Ethereum's EIP-7702 mechanism. Later, they redirected wallet transactions to a malicious smart contract and transferred billions of dollars worth of crypto to attacker-controlled wallets. Lastly, they spread the stolen funds across multiple wallets and converted some assets into ETH to avoid asset freezes.
According to The Kobeissi Letter, the attack unfolded across multiple blockchains, with most of the funds reportedly drained in approximately 20 minutes.
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