Rome:Major cryptocurrency exchange Binance announced that it is currently investigating a "potential security issue" that has led to the freezing of approximately $3 billion in digital assets. The company assured that user funds are entirely secure despite the incident.

According to Anadolu Agency – English, Binance has taken immediate steps to review all relevant information with urgency and advised users to be cautious of scams, avoiding unofficial links and requests for account information. Co-founder Changpeng Zhao confirmed on social media platform X that user funds remain safe and acknowledged the swift freezing of assets by Tether and Circle, amounting to around $971 million and $823 million, respectively.

Binance has temporarily disabled trading of tokens listed on Binance Alpha to address the security concern. The company is collaborating with law enforcement, issuers, blockchain intelligence firms, and industry partners to trace and freeze additional assets. Co-founder Yi He reassured users that they would cover all hacking losses and that deposits and withdrawals are temporarily suspended during the security checks.

The initial investigation suggests that the security incident may have involved a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, allowing unauthorized withdrawal transactions. Binance reported no evidence of any wallet private key leaks and plans to release a detailed technical post-mortem once the investigation concludes. The estimated total impact of the incident is around $6.3 billion, with $3 billion already frozen on-chain.