Is Coinbase Safe After the $6 Billion Binance Hack?

Hackers took more than $8 billion from Binance, Bybit, and Bitget in 20 months. None of the attacks stole the master passwords, known as private keys. Each tricked the exchange’s own systems into approving withdrawals.

The risk reaches beyond exchange users. Coinbase, which has disclosed no comparable theft, holds the Bitcoin behind most US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds ETFs. Its defenses now protect Wall Street’s money too.

How Hackers Got Past 3 Exchanges

Binance lost about $6.3 billion on October 29. Co-CEO Richard Teng said the $6 billion Binance heist began with an engineer’s compromised laptop. Binance found no evidence of a key leak.

“To be clear: the attacker did not simply use one engineer’s permissions, and this was not a single ‘one-click’ action,” Teng stated.

Bybit lost nearly $1.5 billion in February 2025. Hackers planted code in Safe{Wallet}, an outside app Bybit used to approve transfers. Staff saw one destination while signing another. The FBI blamed North Korea.

Bitget lost about $387.5 million in September. Attackers entered through flaws in outside security products. Fake withdrawal orders then passed through Bitget’s normal signing process.

What Coinbase Does Differently