New largest crypto hack ever: An estimated $6 billion stolen from Binance
Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange by trade volume, has more than 300 million users. It does not have an EU MiCA license.
Assets stolen include over 18,000 Bitcoin, 200,000 Ether and billions in stablecoins, indicating a widespread wallet access. About half the stablecoins could be frozen following the transfers. BTC and ETH can’t be frozen. Crypto prices reacted mildly to the hack, e.g. Bitcoin price fell by only around 4%.
Binance has pledged to cover all losses using its Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU) and company funds.
We have seen many a large hack in crypto. For example, in February 2025, exchange Bybit lost over $1 billion worth of crypto assets. Large hacks will keep happening. Crypto assets are purely digital. This forefront of new technology allows new, growing usecases for financial activity. Naturally, it introduces new risks.
Exchanges and cross-chain bridges as targets
| Incident | Date | USD million |
|---|---|---|
| Binance | Oct 2026 | 6,300 |
| Bybit | Feb 2025 | 1,500 |
| Poly Network | Aug 2021 | 610 |
| Ronin | Mar 2022 | 540 |
| Coincheck | Jan 2018 | 530 |
| Mt. Gox | 2013–2014 | 500 |
F5 Crypto uses institutional custodians. Assets held in the funds we manage are highly secure. We do not, and never have, held assets on Binance.
One security feature we use is a timelock, where a fully authorized transaction will not execute until 48 hours have passed. Within the waiting period, the transaction can be halted. A single transaction of the Binance hack transferred 167,464 ETH and 1.615 billion USDT. The respective Binance hot-wallet did not use a timelock.
F5 Crypto Note · October 2026