Binance hack: $2.5bn frozen as bitcoin slides, and South African traders watch their exits shut

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by daily trading volume, confirmed on Friday that it had been hacked, that more than $2.5 billion in funds had been frozen in an effort to stop a massive theft, and that all deposits and withdrawals were suspended. The conduct at the centre of the story is a criminal cyberattack, and it is being treated as one: Binance said it was working with law enforcement, and the freeze operation is a police-and-prosecutor matter as much as a corporate one.

For South Africans who hold crypto on the platform, the first thing they noticed on Friday morning was not the dollar figure. It was that the exits were shut. Deposits and withdrawals were halted at about 0030 GMT, which is just after 02:30 South African time, while the company said its team conducts security checks, freezes funds and works with law enforcement. Anyone who had planned to move money in or out of Binance on Friday could not. That is the practical consequence for users here, and it arrived before any explanation of how the breach happened. None has been offered.

Binance posted a series of sometimes contradictory messages on X. It insisted that user funds are completely safe, and it also said it would cover all losses. Both statements are the company’s own, and both are on the record. What is not yet on the record is the size of the theft. Chainalysis, a blockchain analytics company, said its current estimate on the amount stolen is approximately $5.912 billion at the time of theft. If that holds, it would be almost four times the $1.5 billion taken from the Bybit platform in February 2025, an incident attributed to hackers affiliated with North Korea. Binance’s own confirmed figure is the $2.5 billion frozen, not the amount taken, and the gap between the two numbers is the story’s central unknown.

Former Binance chief Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the group but remains a majority shareholder, said it does look like a hack on Binance. He estimated total losses could be a bit higher than $1 billion. That is a third figure, from the platform’s own largest shareholder, and it does not match Chainalysis either. Readers should treat all three numbers as claims in progress rather than a settled total.

The stablecoin issuers moved quickly and their figures are the most concrete in the material. Paolo Ardoino, chief executive of Tether, said his firm froze about $1.6 billion related to a potential Binance exchange hack. Jeremy Allaire, chief executive of Circle, said his company had frozen more than $800 million in USDC. USDT and USDC are stablecoins, digital currencies whose value is linked to the US dollar, which is why they could be frozen in place while bitcoin and ether fell. The two freezes together account for roughly $2.4 billion of the more than $2.5 billion Binance says has been frozen.

The state response is the part still missing. Binance said it was working with law enforcement, and the frozen funds are the visible result of that cooperation so far. The US Department of Justice and the FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment, so no agency has yet confirmed an investigation, an arrest or a charge. South African crypto holders should read that plainly: the freeze is a protective measure, not a recovery, and no one has been held to account yet.

The market reaction was immediate. At about 0025 GMT, bitcoin had lost nearly five percent, Ethereum fell nearly six percent, and BNB, the token native to Binance, tumbled nearly 10 percent. Stablecoins held within their tight margins, as they are designed to. For South African traders, the rand value of a crypto portfolio moved with those percentages overnight, and the ability to act on the move was limited by the suspended withdrawals. That combination, a falling price and a closed door, is what users here are living with.

As eNCA reported on 30 October 2026, Binance confirmed the hack and the freeze. That reporting is accurate on the facts it carries. What a South African reader needs on top of it is the local consequence: the exchange is used here for trading, for remittances and for holding savings in dollar-linked tokens, and all of those uses depend on being able to withdraw. The suspension is temporary by the company’s account, but temporary has no date attached to it in anything Binance has said.

The wider worry the incident sits inside is also worth stating. Many observers have expressed concern that the expanding capabilities of artificial intelligence models could compromise cryptography and IT security protocols. Nothing in the material links this hack to AI, and this paper does not make that link. It is context for why exchanges are being watched more closely, not an explanation of what happened at Binance.

The Enquirer will keep this story on the business and technology desk and will report the confirmed loss figure, the restoration of deposits and withdrawals, and any law enforcement action when those become checkable facts rather than company statements. Until then, South African users should treat the freeze as the operative fact: their funds are reported safe by Binance, their access is not, and the number at the centre of it all is still moving.