Recap: How Binance’s record $6.3B hack unfolded

This article summarizes Cointelegraph’s coverage of the Binance hack as it unfolded. See the full timeline for detailed updates here.

Hackers stole about $6.3 billion from Binance on Thursday, in what is now the largest cryptocurrency theft on record.

As with Bybit’s $1.5 billion loss in February 2025 and September’s Bitget breach, onchain investigators attributed Binance’s record-breaking exploit to North Korea-backed hackers.

By Friday morning, the world’s largest exchange said investigators had found additional breach points after initially suspecting an engineer’s compromised laptop as a possible entry point.

“To be clear: the attacker did not simply use one engineer’s permissions, and this was not a single ‘one-click’ action,” said Binance co-CEO Richard Teng. “Our investigation has not attributed responsibility to any individual.”

Binance said it had set aside more than $6.34 billion in company funds to cover the losses, including $5 billion held in the same tokens stolen in the hack.

EIP-7702’s role in the hack comes under scrutiny 

Ethereum’s EIP-7702 upgrade came under fire after attackers used it to drain a Binance wallet. Blockaid CEO Ido Ben-Natan told Cointelegraph that compromised signing systems likely enabled the theft.