On October 29, 2026, Binance lost around $6.3 billion in crypto assets spread across at least ten blockchains, the largest theft ever recorded in the sector, according to the tracking firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis.
The British broadcaster BBC reported on October 30 that Binance suspended deposits and withdrawals and pledged to cover all losses, while the company maintains that the incident began with a compromised engineer's laptop. The Guardian reported that around $3 billion had already been located and that Tether froze close to $1.57 billion. For Mexico and Latin America the episode matters because a share of users in the region operate on global exchanges: recovery does not depend on the country of residence, but on how quickly stablecoin issuers and authorities in each jurisdiction act. The case also brings the architecture of freezing to the fore: stablecoins can be blocked at their issuer's discretion, while native assets fall outside that mechanism.
According to Wired, TRM Labs' analysis indicates that most of the haul left in about 20 minutes, from wallets on Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tron and Solana, and that the preparation began at least 36 hours earlier, with small test withdrawals. Chainalysis and TRM Labs pointed to matches with TraderTraitor, the North Korean unit linked to the Lazarus group; no authority has confirmed authorship. Tom Robinson, of Elliptic, told Wired that he considers North Korean authorship likely and that, if confirmed, the amount nearly doubles everything that country has stolen in crypto to date. About half of the funds was frozen; the rest, in bitcoin, ether and XRP, cannot be blocked that way.
The closest precedent is Bybit: in 2025 the FBI attributed the theft of $1.5 billion to TraderTraitor. The route of the remaining $3.3 billion, the pace at which Binance restores deposits and withdrawals, and the response of stablecoin issuers will be the next data points to watch for exchanges with clients in Mexico.
This article was drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence from verified sources and reviewed by a human editor before publication.