Bitcoin fell below $78,000 on Friday as concerns over a potential security breach at cryptocurrency exchange Binance rattled digital asset markets, prompting several major crypto firms to freeze billions of dollars in funds linked to the incident.
The world's largest cryptocurrency fell over 4% to $77,994.96, extending its losses after breaking below the psychologically important $80,000 threshold.
Ether , the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, dropped 4.84% to $2,247.45, while Binance's native token, BNB, tumbled 7.68% to $694.45.
Defying the broader sell-off, Hyperliquid's HYPE token surged 9.7% to $89.08.
Several cryptocurrency firms, including stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether, froze a combined $2.54 billion in funds linked to the suspected incident on Thursday.
Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire said his company had frozen more than $800 million in USD Coin, while Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said the firm had halted transactions involving more than $1.5 billion in USDT potentially connected to the breach.
Ripple also helped prevent the movement of $200 million in funds linked to the suspected attack, according to Binance co-founder Yi He.
Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence identified nearly $6 billion in digital assets across 55 wallet addresses potentially associated with the incident, suggesting the scale of the suspected breach could be significantly larger than the amount frozen.
Binance has not explicitly confirmed that a hack occurred, saying it was investigating reports of a potential security issue.
"Our teams are aware of reports of a potential security issue and are actively investigating," a Binance spokesperson said, adding that user funds remained safe.
Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao also sought to reassure investors that customer funds were secure, although he said the incident appeared to be a hack.
The developments have renewed concerns over security vulnerabilities in the cryptocurrency industry, which has suffered a string of major breaches in recent years.
In 2025, cryptocurrency exchange Bybit suffered a roughly $1.5 billion hack, while rival Bitget more recently lost over $350 million in digital assets to cyber theft.
—CNBC's Liz Napolitano and Davis Giangiulio contributed to this report.
