Bitcoin slides below $77,000 after Binance hit by biggest crypto theft on record

Bitcoin's value plummeted below $77,000 after Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, announced a massive security breach resulting in an estimated loss of $6.3 billion in assets. In the immediate aftermath, Bitcoin's price plummeted by 4.5 percent, reaching $76,664 within the first hour of trading on Friday morning (UAE time). Ether, another major cryptocurrency, saw a 5.2 percent drop, falling to $2,190, while Binance's native token BNB saw the largest decline at 7.1 percent, trading at $698.65.

The fallout from the incident was swift, with over $1.5 billion in leveraged positions being liquidated, primarily due to investors betting on a price rise. According to Blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the theft was estimated at $5.9 billion at the time of the incident, while TRM Labs linked the attack to North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor with high confidence.

Binance's co-founder and CEO, Yi He, assured that the exchange would absorb all the financial losses. However, the fallout for the exchange has been severe, with deposits and withdrawals currently suspended. Binance co-chief executive Rick Maeda suggested that BNB's decline was "quite modest" given the scale of the theft, citing the exchange's substantial assets under custody ($144 billion) and the rapid freezing of funds by stablecoin issuers.

Polymarket, a prediction market, briefly halted trading on Thursday following reports of unauthorized withdrawals linked to a compromised third-party provider. However, there is currently no evidence to suggest that this incident is connected to the Binance theft.