Crypto Stocks Slide After Record $6.3 Billion Binance Hack

Shares of Circle Internet Group , Robinhood Markets and Coinbase Global fell 5.93%, 6.17% and 5.33%, respectively, in premarket after Binance said a security incident had an estimated impact of $6.3 billion, the biggest crypto hack on record. Bitcoin fell more than 4% to below $78,000.Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, said about $3 billion of the affected assets had been frozen, and pledged to cover all losses with its Secure Asset Fund for Users and company funds. An initial investigation pointed to a compromised engineer's laptop that let an attacker submit unauthorized withdrawals, though co-CEO Richard Teng later said the attack was a complex process, not one engineer's misuse of permissions. We have found no evidence of any wallet private key leak, Binance said. It suspended withdrawals and expects to begin resuming them within 48 hours.Circle, which issues the USDC stablecoin, froze more than $800 million of USDC tied to the incident, while Tether froze more than $1.5 billion of its stablecoin and Ripple helped halt $200 million. Crypto data provider Arkham Intelligence linked nearly $6 billion of assets to 55 wallets tied to the exploit.