Bitcoin tumbles as Binance halts withdrawals after hack

Bitcoin ↘ 0.30% fell below $80,000 and then below $78,000 as fears of a multibillion-dollar breach at Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, spread through digital asset markets during Asian trading hours on Friday, Oct. 30. CNBC reported that the drop came as several large crypto firms froze billions of dollars in funds linked to the incident. Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals while it investigates.cnbc.com

The sell-off went well beyond bitcoin. Ether Ethereum ↗ 0.62% dropped nearly 5%, and Binance's BNB ↘ 0.60% token slid more than 7%, CNBC reported. XRP ↗ 0.07% and Solana ↘ 0.07% each lost about 7% over 24 hours, total crypto market value fell 4.28% to $2.6 trillion, and futures liquidations reached $1.15 billion, according to The Korea Herald. Hyperliquid's HYPE ↘ 10.42% token went the other way and rose.biz.heraldcorp.com+1

What happened at Binance

The outflows started late Thursday, Oct. 29. One wallet labeled "Binance 14" was linked to a smart contract set up by an address funded partly through the Tornado Cash mixer. Minutes later, a single transaction moved about 167,464 ETH, 1.615 billion USDT Tether and 62 other tokens to a new address, Tech-ish reported. Estimates of the total vary. Glassnode put the drained assets at about $5.3 billion, while Arkham Intelligence flagged nearly $6 billion across 55 wallet addresses. Analysts warned that the larger figures may include transfers unrelated to the attack.sg.finance.yahoo.com+3

Binance told TechCrunch it was "aware of reports of a potential security issue" and said that "user funds are completely safe." Co-founder Yi He said the exchange "will cover all hacking losses" and that deposits and withdrawals were paused while staff ran security checks, froze funds and worked with law enforcement. Founder Changpeng Zhao said "Binance appears to have been hacked." He added that losses "could be larger" than $1 billion, "but the compensation coverage will be sufficient".news.bitcoin.com+2

Issuers freeze billions

Stablecoin issuers moved quickly to freeze funds. Tether froze more than 1.567 billion USDT, and Circle ↘ 9.31% froze more than 800 million USD Coin. Ripple blocked about $200 million in RLUSD, and World Liberty Financial froze roughly $27 million in USD1. Binance said the verified total frozen had reached $2.54 billion and could grow. More than $1 billion, mostly ether, is still out of reach, and the attacker has been selling tokens that cannot be frozen on decentralized exchanges.investinglive.com+2

A familiar vulnerability

Coinbase ↘ 10.62% senior director Conor Grogan urged Binance to "immediately halt the automatic sweeping of funds from user wallets into hot wallets". The incident comes after Bybit's roughly $1.5 billion hack in 2025 and Bitget's more recent loss of over $350 million. Binance has said it will publish a full post-mortem once the investigation is complete, but it has not given a loss figure or a date for withdrawals to resume.news.bitcoin.com+2