History's Biggest Heist Just Hit Crypto, And Half the Loot Is Already on Ice
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| By Dawn Pennington |
Quartz called it Binance's biggest hack ever.
Mark Gough says that undersells it. By a mile.
Late Thursday, hackers drained about $6.3 billion from wallets at Binance, the world's largest centralized crypto exchange. Most of it moved in about 20 minutes, across 10 blockchains.³
That's not just a crypto record.
It's the biggest heist of any kind, ever.
Bigger Than a Dictator's Bank Job
For 23 years, the high-water mark for theft was the Central Bank of Iraq.
On March 18, 2003, Saddam Hussein's son Qusay hauled out nearly $1 billion in cash, on the eve of the U.S. invasion.
Binance's loss is more than six times that. It's also about four times the old crypto record: the $1.5 billion North Korean hackers took from Bybit in February 2025.
When I called it the biggest hack in crypto history, Mark set me straight, saying, “It's not just crypto, it's the biggest heist ever.”
Even Reuters hedged, reporting that analysts said it could be the largest financial heist of all time.
Mark's data says drop the "could."
Same Crew, 4x the Haul
Binance says the breach may have started with a single engineer's hacked laptop. That opened a door into its systems — and the attackers ordered the withdrawals themselves.
TRM Labs and Chainalysis both say they're highly confident North Korea is behind it. Chainalysis' CEO pinned it on TraderTraitor, the same unit tied to last year’s Bybit attack.
The same crew. Twenty months later. Four times the take.
Half the Loot Is Already on Ice
Here's the part of the story that didn't make the headlines. Within hours, the companies behind the biggest stablecoins started locking down stolen funds:
- Tether froze nearly $1.57 billion.
- Circle (CRCL) froze more than $800 million.
- Ripple — the company behind XRP (XRP) — froze about $200 million.
All told, Binance says about $3 billion is frozen on-chain. And it has pledged to cover every customer loss.
Mark sees a silver lining there.
On the plus side, it's probably the fastest response and commitment to refund the client base. Binance has already started buying some tokens on the market and will make OTC purchases of tokens with low liquidity.
Translation: Binance isn't just promising refunds. It's already buying back what was stolen — and for thinly traded tokens, it'll buy in private deals so it doesn't send their prices soaring.
There's a catch, though.
Binance's emergency fund for users (SAFU) holds about $1 billion. The hack is six times that. Which means Binance will need to dig into company money to make good on its promise.
Fundstrat's Sean Farrell says this doesn't look like a solvency problem for Binance. And the numbers back him up: Binance held about $162.8 billion in customer assets as of its 2025 annual report.
So… a record-shattering loss. But not another FTX.
Speaking of …
Same Season, Different Ending
Things got interesting though when Mark pointed out the calendar.
And he reminded our team that the FTX exchange liquidity event — the crash that kicked off the 2022 bear market — happened around the same time four years ago. During the midterm election season.
He's right, almost to the day.
FTX halted customer withdrawals on Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2022 — Election Day. Three days later, it filed for bankruptcy.
This year's midterms are this coming Tuesday, Nov. 3.
Same season. Same frozen withdrawals. And yet, we’re looking at a very different ending.
FTX left customers staring at an $8 billion hole. Binance says it's covering every dollar.
Still, the lesson is the same one our own MarijaMatić drew the week FTX fell: The best protection against a crisis like this is keeping custody of your own crypto.
Four years later, it still holds.
Related story: Trezor Data Breach Raises Serious Security Concerns
What This Means for Your Crypto
Binance will likely make its customers whole. But you shouldn't need an exchange's promise to get your money back.
So, here’s what your crypto experts suggest: Keep only what you're actively trading on any exchange, even the biggest one. Move your long-term coins to a hardware wallet you control.
Just be sure you do it the smart way.
That means buy the device only from the maker's official store. This month, tampered Ledgers drained $80 million from buyers who got them elsewhere.
Never type your seed phrase anywhere — no matter how official the "security alert" looks. Mark warned about exactly that after the Trezor breach.
Finally, consider a diversified storage solution. Recent developments have made cycles expert Juan Villaverde suggest you hold your crypto strategically across different environments to truly enhance your crypto security.
The Bottom Line
Quartz saw Binance's worst day.
Mark saw something bigger: The worst day any vault has ever had.
But if you’ve been following your crypto experts, your coins were already safely off the exchange. And locked away where only you have the key.
If it wasn’t, now is a good time to review those updates. And take the steps to secure your crypto now.
To your health and wealth,
Dawn
