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.

“Our teams continue to work closely with law enforcement, issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners to trace and freeze additional assets,” Binance said in a statement posted to social media. “User funds are safe.”

Stablecoin providers Tether and Circle each said they froze funds Thursday in response to the incident.

Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, wrote on X that the company had frozen more than an equivalent of $800m in currency associated with the incident “in coordination with law enforcement”. Paolo Ardoino, the CEO of Tether, said on X that the company froze the equivalent of more than $1.5bn in currency related to “a potential Binance exchange hack”.

The price of bitcoin dropped 3.2% Thursday afternoon to under $79,000.

Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, who in 2023 pleaded guilty to a felony related to his failure to prevent money laundering on the platform and stepped down as CEO. Donald Trump pardoned him in 2025.

Zhao posted on X on Thursday that “User funds are safe!” but added that the incident “does look like a hack on Binance”. He added that while he doesn’t manage Binance anymore, “as a shareholder, I expect all user funds will be fully covered”.