Binance Hit by $6.3 Billion, the Largest Hack in Its History: Is a Pledge to Cover Losses Rea

Binance suffered its largest-ever security breach, with hackers draining roughly $6.3 billion from its hot wallet — the biggest exchange hack in crypto history, more than four times the previous record set by Bybit's $1.46 billion theft in February 2025. The attackers compromised an internal engineer's laptop via social engineering and abused Ethereum's EIP-7702 delegation feature to sign a malicious authorization, allowing a contract to drain 63 different tokens within minutes; the breach began at 05:24 UTC with the theft of 167,464 ETH and about $1.6 billion USDT. Stablecoin issuers moved quickly, with Circle freezing $800 million USDC and Tether freezing $1.57 billion USDT, bringing on-chain frozen funds to roughly $3 billion, though Binance must still cover the full $6.3 billion shortfall upfront since frozen assets cannot be converted to liquidity during legal recovery processes. Unlike FTX's collapse from misused customer collateral, Binance's losses stem from an external attack, and the exchange has suspended all deposits and withdrawals while pledging to cover all user losses. The key risk ahead is whether reopening withdrawal channels triggers a chain-wide bank run, testing whether Binance's liquidity reserves can absorb tens of billions in net outflows.