The Binance hack: $6.3 billion in twenty minutes from an engineer's laptop

Fri, 30 Oct 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Yesterday evening, 29 October, Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, suffered the largest crypto theft on record: according to the company itself, around $6.3 billion. The figure is still moving (Chainalysis puts it at about $5.9 billion and TRM Labs at $6.36 billion), but either way it’s four times the previous record, the $1.5 billion stolen from Bybit in February 2025.

What interests me is less the numbers than the how. There are two accounts that fit together: Binance’s, which explains how the attacker got in, and TRM Labs’, which reconstructs it from the transactions on the different chains.

Cryptocurrency on Antonio Cortés (DrZippie)

The Binance hack: $6.3 billion in twenty minutes from an engineer's laptop