Binance founder Changpeng Zhao said late on Thursday that the exchange “was indeed hacked”, hours after more than $2 billion left wallets labelled as Binance’s. Binance itself has stated only that it is investigating a “potential security issue” and has not confirmed any impact on user funds.
Zhao, who no longer runs the exchange but remains a shareholder, wrote on X: “User funds are safe! It looks like Binance was indeed hacked.” He thanked Tether and Circle for freezing about $971 million and $823 million, respectively, according to Blockchain Reporter, which quotes his post. He added that as a shareholder he expects all user funds to be “fully compensated”.
Circle’s chief executive said about 800 million USDC linked to the incident had been frozen, according to a post by the news feed FinancialJuice relayed to IBN. Circle said separately that it was monitoring reports of a possible exploit involving Binance.
At 20:24 UTC on October 29, one transaction moved about 167,500 ETH and 63 other tokens out of the wallet Etherscan labels “Binance 14”, according to BeInCrypto and PANews. The tokens included roughly $1.6 billion in USDT. The recipient was an address created hours earlier. The transaction was triggered by a wallet funded only through Tornado Cash, a mixing service that hides where coins come from.
Totals differ by source. BeInCrypto reported “more than $2 billion”. PANews and Blockchain Reporter, citing Tree News, said about $2.5 billion. Other outlets cited $2.77–2.8 billion across five chains, a figure Coindoo called preliminary. The researcher Spreek, who first flagged the transfer, said it could be routine maintenance but looked “extremely sus”.
Three different voices are now in play, and they don’t say the same thing.
Binance said its teams are “actively investigating” a potential security issue and has not confirmed any impact on user funds. Crypto Briefing reports it has not formally declared a breach.
Zhao went further and said the exchange appears to have been hacked. He is a shareholder, not an officer, and his compensation pledge is an expectation, not a Binance commitment.
Tether and Circle Their freezes are the strongest outside signal so far. Circle’s chief executive has since confirmed its freeze publicly
The freezes cover stablecoins only. They do not touch the roughly $450 million in ETH that BeInCrypto said the recipient forwarded to another new address within 15 minutes. That claim comes from a single outlet.
Crypto Briefing reported about $450 million in long positions liquidated, citing market observers. Earlier, Crypto Briefing said BNB fell as much as 9% and Bitcoin slipped toward $78,000–79,000. The outlets attribute those moves to the reports.
Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire said the company has frozen more than $800 million in USDC associated with the suspected Binance exploit, in coordination with law enforcement. He said Circle is closely tracking reports of the incident and will continue supporting the investigation. This is the first freeze confirmed by the issuer’s own chief executive, not only by Zhao’s account of it.
Tether has reportedly frozen about $1.5 billion in USDT linked to the incident. That is well above the $971 million Zhao cited earlier. The newer figure is attributed to Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino by the outlet Bitcoin Sistemi, which reported $1.56 billion. IBN has not seen Tether’s own statement.
The numbers do not yet reconcile. The frozen stablecoin figures cannot be set cleanly against the reported totals of $2 billion to $2.8 billion. The roughly $450 million in ETH that BeInCrypto said moved onward is also not covered by any stablecoin freeze. Binance’s own statement still describes a potential security issue and says it has not confirmed any impact on user funds.