As of 30 October 2026, the headline difference between the two hacks is scale. The Binance breach on 29 October 2026 has an estimated impact of about $6.3 billion, while the Bybit theft in 2025 was $1.5 billion. On those preliminary estimates, the Binance incident is more than four times larger, and it has been described as the largest crypto theft on record, surpassing Bybit.

Scale is not the only difference, but it shapes almost everything else. A $6.3 billion estimated loss puts greater pressure on recovery, on freezing efforts, and on the exchange's coverage plan than a $1.5 billion loss would. It also draws more attention from trackers, issuers, and the wider market, which helps explain why the Binance case has produced such a detailed early account of frozen funds.

The reported mechanism in the Binance case is also specific. The preliminary investigation has suggested a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop may have allowed an attacker to access a service container and submit unauthorised withdrawal transactions. The attacker was reported to have used the Ethereum feature EIP-7702 on a wallet known as Binance 14, turning it into a sweeper, with about 204,500 ETH moved. No evidence of a wallet private key leak has been found in the preliminary findings.

Attribution is another point of comparison, with an important caution. In the Binance case, TRM Labs traced the incident to a North Korean unit called TraderTraitor, and other trackers also pointed to North Korea. That is an investigators' claim, not a court finding, and Pyongyang has previously denied hacking allegations. Any comparison with Bybit should therefore keep attribution language careful in both cases, rather than treating early tracing as a final verdict.

The freezing response in the Binance case has been unusually large and fast in the reported figures. About $3 billion has been frozen so far, including $2.3 billion in USDT and USDC, with Tether freezing more than $1.567 billion USDT, Circle about $823 million USDC, Ripple about $200 million, and World Liberty Financial $27 million USD1. Those issuer actions are a major part of the early Binance story, and they show how much of the response now runs through stablecoin issuers.

Binance's own response has also been stated clearly by its co-CEO. Yi He has said all losses will be covered from company funds and the SAFU emergency fund, which holds about $1 billion in bitcoin, and that user funds are safe. Deposits and withdrawals were suspended as a precaution, with Yi He expecting withdrawal resumption to begin within the next 48 hours. Some reports have said deposits were unaffected, a discrepancy noted honestly here rather than resolved by choosing one version.

Market impact is a further difference in degree. After the Binance breach, Bitcoin fell below $77,000, down about 4.5% in 24 hours to $76,664 and later about $77,984, ether fell about 3.2%, BNB fell about 3.9%, and over $1 billion in leveraged positions was liquidated in 24 hours. A theft at the world's largest exchange, at record scale, was always likely to move the wider market, and the reported figures show that it did.

In summary, the Binance hack surpasses Bybit on estimated size, carries its own reported mechanism involving Binance 14 and EIP-7702, has produced about $3 billion in freezes so far, and has drawn a company-funds-plus-SAFU coverage statement. The investigation is ongoing and figures are preliminary estimates. Readers should rely on official Binance channels for updates on the Binance case.

FAQ: Which hack was bigger? Binance, at an estimated $6.3 billion, versus Bybit at $1.5 billion in 2025. How much Binance money has been frozen? About $3 billion so far. Is the Binance attribution proven in court? No, the TraderTraitor link is an investigators' claim, not a court finding.