$6 billion Binance hack sends bitcoin, ether tumbling; Standard Chartered expects more pain

The crypto market is a sea of red amid renewed security concerns. Standard Chartered expects more near-term pain.

Bitcoin (BTC) has declined more than 3% over the past 24 hours to about $77,400 on Friday morning, having briefly dropped toward $76,000 a couple of hours ago. Ether (ETH), BNB (BNB), XRP (XRP) and solana (SOL) declined by slightly more.

The sell-off hit leveraged futures traders particularly hard. Total market-wide liquidations stood at $1.5 billion at the time of writing, with long positions – bets that prices would rise – bearing most of the losses. Bitcoin accounted for $468 million in liquidations, followed by ether at $358 million.

Binance said on Thursday that a security incident had affected roughly $6.3 billion worth of crypto assets, surpassing the record $1.5 billion hack at Bybit in 2025, which was linked to North Korea.

“It does look like a hack,” Binance’s former chief executive Changpeng Zhao said on X. Zhao, widely known as CZ, no longer runs the exchange but remains a key shareholder.

In a post on X, Binance said the suspected breach may have involved a compromised engineer’s laptop, enabling unauthorized withdrawals.

Vincent Chok, founder and chief executive of First Digital, said FDUSD stolen in the attack had been frozen.

“FDUSD stolen in the attack has been frozen, and we’re monitoring the situation closely. We’re working alongside the Binance team and will share updates as we have them. Our priority is protecting FDUSD holders and stopping bad actors from moving stolen funds. Protecting users is a responsibility we all share,” Chok said in an email.

Earlier on Thursday, decentralized betting platform Polymarket suspended international trading after hackers drained more than $2.6 million from user accounts.

Standard Chartered sees more downside

The back-to-back incidents at two of the industry’s best-known platforms could keep prices under pressure for some time, Standard Chartered’s Global Head of Digital Assets Research Geoffrey Kendrick said in an email.

“The news overnight about a (to be investigated) hack on Binance and associated freezing of assets has seen crypto prices, as well as the price of crypto stocks, a lot lower,” he said in an email. “I suspect the negative price action still has some way to go. Only after assets are unfrozen and more detail of the hack emerges will we find a new base.”

Kendrick said investors should eventually rotate toward decentralized exchanges, arguing that Binance’s troubles could accelerate a structural shift away from centralized platforms.

“At that time I would encourage investors to re-engage with Uniswap. The decentralized exchange (DEX) has never had any exploits, and the hack of the largest centralized exchange (CEX), in Binance, should see the ratio of DEX to CEX trading continue to increase,” he said.

Kendrick retained his $100 price target for UNI for 2030, arguing that, “today’s Binance hack is another reason why that forecast may end up being too low.”

DEX tokens fall

For now, however, decentralized-exchange tokens were not insulated from the broader risk-off move.

Uniswap’s UNI traded more than 3% lower over 24 hours, tracking the wider market decline. Most DEX-related tokens were also down, including Aster, Pump.fun’s PUMP, Jupiter’s JUP and Litentry’s LIT.

Hyperliquid’s HYPE was the notable exception, gaining 15% after Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, announced a partnership with Trade.xyz to bring Hyperliquid-powered perpetual futures trading to the U.S. market, pending regulatory approval.