Ripple and World Liberty Financial Freeze Stablecoins Tied to Suspected Binance Hack

BSCN·2026-10-29 22:51:41 UTC

World Liberty Financial froze $27M of USD1 and Ripple reportedly froze about $200M, likely RLUSD, after a suspected Binance hack. Tether and Circle froze over $2.3B.

Ripple and World Liberty Financial have joined Tether and Circle in freezing stablecoins linked to a suspected hack at Binance, widening an issuer-led response to the incident.

World Liberty co-founder @ZachWitkoff said @worldlibertyfi froze $27M of its $USD1 stablecoin tied to what he called the @binance hack. Binance co-founder @heyibinance separately thanked @Ripple for "promptly freezing" about $200M. The asset is most likely $RLUSD, Ripple's stablecoin, since XRP cannot be frozen. Binance co-founder Yi He wrote on X that Ripple had frozen about $200 million. TechFlow reported that Witkoff's post said USD1 had proactively frozen approximately $27 million related to the incident.

Tether and Circle Freezes Add to the Total

The Ripple and World Liberty actions add to much larger freezes by the two biggest stablecoin issuers. TechCrunch reported that Tether froze about $1.56 billion tied to the Binance incident, while Circle froze about $800 million. Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the company had frozen more than 1.567 billion USDT associated with the potential hack.

Totals are unsettled. FinanceFeeds noted the announcements do not establish how much represents distinct, currently immobilized balances, or whether later freezes overlap with earlier figures. Freezes also have limits. Stablecoin issuers can freeze their own tokens but not ETH or BTC, so roughly 195,000 ETH sent to a flagged Ethereum address and about 16,700 BTC that left Binance wallets fall outside those freezes.

Binance Pauses Withdrawals, Cause Unconfirmed

Binance has not confirmed a hack. The exchange told TechCrunch it is "aware of reports of a potential security issue and are actively investigating," adding that user funds are completely safe. A spokesperson said Binance has temporarily suspended withdrawals on multiple networks as a precaution. The exchange has said withdrawals will stay paused until the security issue is fully resolved.

Founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the company but is its largest shareholder, said Binance had likely been hacked and that he expects users' funds to be "fully covered." Binance has not yet published a detailed incident report establishing the cause of the suspicious transfers or its financial exposure.

Estimates of the amount moved vary widely and remain unverified. The amount stolen, if any, remains unverified, according to Yahoo Finance's reporting of BeInCrypto's analysis. Investors are watching for Binance's findings on cause and scale, and for when withdrawals resume.