Hot Wallets, Cold Nerves: Ripple Locks $200M as Binance Estimates a $6.3B Hack

Ripple froze about $200 million in RLUSD linked to a potential exploit on Binance, which estimates total losses near $6.3B, making the incident the largest crypto security breach on record. The action came on October 29, 2026, after unauthorized transfers moved funds from Binance-linked hot wallets.

Ripple Senior Vice President of Stablecoins Jack McDonald confirmed that the company was actively freezing RLUSD holdings connected to the incident. Tether also froze roughly $1.57 billion in USDT, while Circle locked more than $800 million in USDC as issuers responded to the transfers.

Binance attributed the breach to a compromised DevOps engineer’s laptop, saying there was no evidence that private keys had been leaked. The exchange said user funds remained “SAFU,” adding that withdrawals should resume within 48 hours.

The estimated $6.3B impact surpasses the $1.5B Bybit hack from 2025. Ripple’s intervention placed RLUSD at the center of a coordinated issuer response to one of crypto’s largest reported security incidents.