Hackers took more than $8 billion from Binance, Bybit, and Bitget in 20 months. None of the attacks stole the master passwords, known as private keys. Each tricked the exchange’s own systems into approving withdrawals.
The risk reaches beyond exchange users. Coinbase, which has disclosed no comparable theft, holds the Bitcoin behind most US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds ETFs. Its defenses now protect Wall Street’s money too.
How Hackers Got Past 3 Exchanges
Binance lost about $6.3 billion on October 29. Co-CEO Richard Teng said the $6 billion Binance heist began with an engineer’s compromised laptop. Binance found no evidence of a key leak.
“To be clear: the attacker did not simply use one engineer’s permissions, and this was not a single ‘one-click’ action,” Teng stated.
Bybit lost nearly $1.5 billion in February 2025. Hackers planted code in Safe{Wallet}, an outside app Bybit used to approve transfers. Staff saw one destination while signing another. The FBI blamed North Korea.
Bitget lost about $387.5 million in September. Attackers entered through flaws in outside security products. Fake withdrawal orders then passed through Bitget’s normal signing process.
What Coinbase Does Differently
Coinbase uses multi-party computation (MPC), which splits each key into pieces kept on separate machines. Coinbase Institutional co-CEO Greg Tusar described it in 2025.
“MPC ensures that full private keys are never stored at rest, nor in any single machine during signing and when in use,” Tusar explained.
Coinbase also says it builds all security-critical software in-house. Both Bitget and Bybit’s breach came through third parties.
Researcher Zeeme argues this blocks all three attack routes, since a stolen laptop yields one useless key piece.
Arkham data shows Coinbase wallets hold about 959,000 BTC across 69.8 million addresses. That stake is worth $74.7 billion at Bitcoin’s current price.
“Coinbase is safe. We’re monitoring price volatility, tracking stolen funds on-chain, and remaining vigilant as ever,” Rob Witoff, Coinbase Chief Technology Officer.
“We are blocking sends to compromised Binance wallets and have made some adjustments to our cold storage systems solely out of an abundance of caution. Again,” said Jeff Lunglhofer, CSO at Coinbase.
No Platform Is Immune To Security Incidents
Nevertheless, Coinbase is not breach-free. In 2025, criminals bribed overseas support staff to leak customer data. Coinbase put the cost at $180 million to $400 million, according to The Register, but said funds were never accessible.
Its size is also a risk. Researcher Marc Baumann estimated in April that Coinbase holds 84% of US spot Bitcoin ETF assets.
By Baumann’s count, that puts about $77 billion with a single custodian. Not every issuer relies on Coinbase alone. Fidelity holds its own fund’s Bitcoin, and Morgan Stanley names BNY as a second custodian.
For ETF holders, the test is whether Coinbase’s checks hold where its rivals’ failed. All three thefts hit the approval step, which Coinbase says it screens for tampering before any transfer is signed.
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