Billions drain from Binance hot wallets in suspected hack; Tether and Circle freeze funds, bitcoin slips below $79,000

Starting around 4:24 p.m. ET on Thursday, Oct. 29, large amounts of ether, stablecoins and other tokens moved out of Binance-linked hot wallets, the internet-connected wallets the exchange uses to process withdrawals, to a single new address. Unchained counted about $3.52 billion on Ethereum alone between 4:24 and 5:04 p.m. ET. Totals that include bitcoin and Tron are still being reconciled and differ widely between trackers, so we are not citing a single overall figure yet.

What Binance said: At 5:16 p.m. ET the exchange said its teams were investigating a “potential security issue” and had not confirmed any impact on user funds. At 5:29 p.m. it updated that to say user funds are completely safe. Binance has not itself called the event a hack. Founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the exchange, posted that it appears to be a hack and that he expects user funds to be fully covered.

Freezes: Circle froze 823 million USDC in the receiving address at 5:04 p.m. ET, and Tether blacklisted that address plus seven downstream wallets. If confirmed as a theft, this would be the largest crypto hack on record, according to Decrypt.

Market reaction: Bitcoin fell below $79,000, and Binance’s BNB token dropped about 7%, Decrypt reported, as liquidations rose across derivatives markets.

What to watch next: whether Binance confirms a breach and its size, whether it pauses withdrawals, how much more Tether and Circle freeze, and whether bitcoin holds the $79,000 area into the Asian session.