As billions of dollars in transfers from Binance wallets are investigated, Bitcoin fell to $78,800, while BNB stood out after dropping 6% in an hour.
Crypto markets accelerated their sell-off following developments related to a possible security issue at Binance. According to one-hour data cited in a CoinDesk report, Bitcoin (BTC) fell 2%, Ethereum (ETH) fell 3%, and BNB fell 6%.
Bitcoin Falls Below $79,000, BNB Sees Steeper Losses
Bitcoin fell to $78,800 at the price snapshot cited in the report, while BNB saw the steepest decline among the three cryptocurrencies. BNB’s one-hour loss was three times the rate of Bitcoin’s drop. Ethereum also declined over the same period, showing that the sell-off was not limited to BNB.
The price moves coincided with the start of monitoring assets transferred from a Binance wallet to a new external account. The exchange said its security teams were actively investigating the matter.
Billion-Dollar Transfers and Frozen Funds in Focus
The assets in the account under review were worth more than $2 billion, while security firm Blockaid reported that the total amount transferred was approximately $3.3 billion. The transferred assets include ETH, USDT, and USDC.
Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) said the incident appeared to be an attack and that Tether had frozen approximately $971 million, while Circle had frozen approximately $823 million. CZ said user funds were safe and added that although he no longer runs Binance, he expects all user funds to be covered as a shareholder.
You can find details of the exchange’s investigation and CZ’s message about the funds in our report on Binance’s first statement.
Not investment advice.