Crypto firms freeze more than $3bn in funds as Binance investigates potential hack

World’s largest crypto exchange said it had not confirmed whether funds had been pilfered

Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Thursday it is investigating reports of a potential security issue as its founder said the incident “does look like a hack on Binance”. The company said cryptocurrency firms had frozen about $3bn in funds by Thursday evening.

It was not immediately clear the extent of the damage hackers might have been able to accomplish and Binance had not explicitly confirmed that funds had been pilfered, but stablecoin issuers quickly froze funds Thursday evening.