Incident All ledgers
Binance: $40.0m
Binance lost $40.0m on 7 May 2019. Ranked 86th of 1,272 crypto failures, with method, returned funds and comparable incidents.
- Date
- 7 May 2019
- Lost
- $40.0m
- Returned or repaid
- None recorded
- Target
- CEX
- Category
- Key Compromise
- Method
- Hot Wallet Key Compromised
- Chains
- Bitcoin
In May 2019, attackers compromised Binance's hot wallet private keys and stole 7,000 bitcoin, worth about $40 million. The exchange paused transactions for a week and covered affected customers from its insurance fund.
Against the ledger
- It ranks 86th of the 1,272 incidents with a known loss, and 2nd in 2019.
- It accounts for 90.4% of the $44.3m in known losses in May 2019.
- 153 incidents in the ledger are classified as Key Compromise, for $8.96bn in total. This one is 0.4% of that.
- The ledger records no returned funds.
Other incidents named Binance
| Date | Target | Lost | Type | Method | Returned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 29 Oct 2026 | Binance | $6.36bn | CEX | Key Leaked via Infrastructure | — |
| 06 Oct 2022 | Binance Bridge | $570.0m | DeFi Protocol | Proof Verifier Bug | — |
Closest in size by the same method
| Date | Target | Lost | Type | Method | Returned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 14 Aug 2025 | BtcTurk | $48.0m | CEX | Hot Wallet Key Compromised | — |
| 19 Jul 2025 | CoinDCX | $44.2m | CEX | Hot Wallet Key Compromised | — |
| 20 Sept 2024 | BingX | $43.3m | CEX | Hot Wallet Key Compromised | — |
| 04 Sept 2023 | Stake.com | $41.3m | Other | Hot Wallet Key Compromised | — |
| 31 Jan 2026 | Step Finance | $40.0m | DeFi Protocol | Private Key Compromised | — |
On Bitminer.io
- Mercado Bitcoin loses $40 million four days after the $6.36 billion Binance incident
- Binance's $6.36bn loss is the largest on record and 97.9% of October's total
- Voyager Digital Liquidated and Shutdown After Deals With FTX and Binance US
All failures in 2019 · The failures ledger
Amounts are DefiLlama’s estimates and can change as incidents are revalued. Its returned figure can include money a company repaid itself, not only funds recovered from attackers. Source: DefiLlama.
Cite this Bitminer.io, “Binance, failures ledger”, data to 2 November 2026, https://bitminer.io/ledger/incident/binance-2019-05-07/. How this is built