SINGAPORE, Oct 30 (Reuters) – A security breach at Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has resulted in an estimated $6.3 billion impact, the biggest crypto heist ever.
Binance said it had worked with partners to freeze the affected assets, with about $3 billion located so far. It gave no update on the status of the remaining $3.3 billion, though Binance co-founder Yi He said the company would cover “all hacking losses”.
The crypto industry has suffered a series of thefts, prompting questions about the security of customer funds and investors to possibly rethink the risks of owning digital assets.
Here are some of the other major thefts to have plagued the industry since bitcoin was born in 2008.
Time period Company What was stolen What happened
February 2025 Cryptocurrency exchange Bybit Digital tokens worth The crypto was taken from a “cold wallet” – a
$1.5 billion digital wallet usually stored offline and so
supposedly more secure – that was used for ether
tokens.
March 2022 Ronin Network, a network that allows Roughly $540 million Hackers stole some 173,600 ether tokens and 25.5
transfer of crypto coins across from a blockchain million USD Coin tokens.
different blockchains project linked to the
popular online game Axie
Infinity
February 2022 Wormhole, a DeFi site $320 million Hackers making off with 120,000 digital tokens
connected to the second-largest cryptocurrency,
ether. The crypto arm of Chicago-based Jump Trading,
which had the year before acquired the developer
behind Wormhole, later replaced the funds.
August 2021 Poly Network, a platform that $610 million (Hackers The hack underscored vulnerabilities in the
facilitates peer-to-peer token behind the heist later burgeoning decentralised finance, or DeFi, sector,
transactions returned nearly all of where users lend, borrow and save in digital tokens,
the stolen funds) bypassing the traditional gatekeepers of finance
such as banks and exchanges.
January 2018 Tokyo-based exchange Coincheck $530 million The thieves attacked one of Coincheck’s “hot wallet”
– a digital folder stored online – to drain the
funds, drawing attention to security at exchanges.
South Korea’s intelligence agency said at the time
that a North Korean hacking group may have been
behind the heist.
Between 2011 and 2014 Tokyo-based bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox Bitcoin worth close to Mt. Gox, which once handled 80% of the world’s
$500 million was stolen bitcoin trade, filed for bankruptcy in early 2014
in one of the earliest after the hack was revealed, with some 24,000
and most high-profile customers losing access to their funds.
crypto hacks.
(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Singapore and Tommy Reggiori Wilkes, Tom Wilson and Elizabeth Howcroft in London; Editing by Jamie Freed)
