Overview
- Blockchain monitors recorded large transfers on Thursday that moved roughly $5.5–$5.8 billion from wallets linked to Binance across Ethereum, Bitcoin and Tron.
- Binance temporarily suspended withdrawals, paused some trading, said user funds are safe, and said it will cover any hacking losses while it conducts security checks.
- Stablecoin issuers intervened quickly: Tether froze about $975 million in USDT and Circle froze about $823 million in USDC, and Binance reported a verified $2.54 billion frozen so far.
- On-chain analysts identified a signed EIP-7702 wallet delegation that was submitted from a Tornado Cash‑funded address minutes before the first transfers, a mechanism that can let delegated smart‑contract code authorize later moves without an additional signature.
- Investigations are ongoing with law enforcement and blockchain‑intelligence firms to find the entry point and attacker, and the incident underlines the acute risk of internet‑connected hot wallets and the gap between gross on‑chain outflows and final unrecoverable losses.