Thieves took a huge pile of coins out of Binance, the largest place people buy and sell them. The exchange puts the loss in the same range as the biggest theft of coins on record, about four times the last one. About half of that money is frozen where it sits, and the rest is still out.
The way in
Binance says someone got in through an engineer's work laptop and used that machine to send the coins out. It has seen no sign that the keys to its wallets leaked, and the coins still left. A missing key leak is not the same thing as a missing loss.
The pause
The exchange has stopped withdrawals, so you cannot take money out right now. A co founder said deposits were still working, while the official notice said both deposits and withdrawals were paused. Those two lines do not match, so do not treat either one as the whole story. The same co founder said withdrawals should start again within two days, and that is a plan, not a finished repair.
The promise
Binance says it will cover every loss from its emergency fund and from its own money. Two firms that issue dollar coins have already locked a large slice of what left, and Tether locked a larger share than Circle did. A freeze stops those coins from moving, but it does not put them back in your account by itself. Getting them back still takes a legal process after the freeze.
The name
Two firms that track coins on public ledgers point to a North Korean hacking group, and one of them states that judgment with high confidence. Binance has not named anyone, and the wire stories carry no government finding. Treat the name as an investigator's read, not as a verdict you can bank on.
The market
Coin prices fell after the news, and the dollar coins held near the peg they are meant to keep. A small slip on one quote is not the same thing as a break in the peg. A digital asset strategist at Fundstrat said this does not yet look like a hole Binance cannot fill. The tell he named is how fast withdrawals come back, and whether people leave in an orderly way.
What would spread it
Three things would push the pain past the coin market, and none of them is the case yet. The first is a dollar coin slipping clearly under its peg. The second is another exchange freezing withdrawals at the same time. The third is Binance failing to pay people back when they ask. A shortfall that forced the exchange to sell its own reserves would be a different story from the one in front of you.
What you keep there
The promise to repay comes from the company that just lost the money, so it is only as good as the reserves behind it. Money sitting on an exchange is an IOU from that exchange, and it is not really yours until you take it out. Keep only what you trade with on that exchange, not the savings you mean to hold. Keep long term savings in your own wallet, or with a regulated custodian that keeps client money apart from its own.