The incident has become one of the most devastating in the history of the digital asset industry. The total damage caused by the attackers currently stands at approximately $6.3 billion, according to CoinDesk.

Bitcoin plummeted below the $77,000 mark (hitting a low of $76,953), while Ethereum dropped 3.35% to $2,241. Leverage played a cruel trick on traders: the total volume of forced liquidations reached $1.5 billion, with those holding long positions (betting on price increases) suffering the heaviest losses.

«If confirmed, this will be the largest hack in crypto history,» noted the financial news account Kobeissi Letter, in a post that would later draw a comment from Elon Musk.

Preliminary reports suggest the attack vector was linked to human error and poor digital hygiene practices.

«Looks like a hack,» commented Binance founder and key shareholder Changpeng Zhao (CZ).

The attacker reportedly gained access to the exchange’s service container via a compromised laptop belonging to one of its software engineers. However, Zhao emphasized a crucial detail: there were no signs of a leak of private keys from the exchange’s core wallets. Binance has promised to publish a detailed technical report following the investigation.

To halt the outflow of funds and contain the threat, the exchange has taken drastic measures:

• Deposits and withdrawals have been temporarily suspended pending comprehensive security audits.

• In collaboration with blockchain industry partners, Binance managed to freeze approximately $3 billion of the affected assets directly on-chain. The issuers of the USDT and USDC stablecoins have also frozen tokens linked to the hackers’ addresses.

• The exchange stated that all user losses will be fully covered by its internal Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU).

«User funds are safe,» the company assured, adding that law enforcement agencies and leading blockchain analytics firms have already been brought in to track down the perpetrators.

SpaceX CEO and X (formerly Twitter) owner Elon Musk did not stay on the sidelines of this major crypto crisis. Replying to a post about the scale of the disaster, he invoked a well-known term from the cybersecurity realm.

«Every day is zero day,» Musk wrote.

A zero-day vulnerability is a software, hardware, or operating system flaw unknown to the developers, which attackers can exploit for a cyberattack before a patch or fix is released.