World Liberty freezes $27 million in USD1 amid Binance security probe
Key Facts
World Liberty Financial CEO Zach Witkoff said the company took proactive steps to freeze $27 million in USD1 linked to the incident under investigation by Binance on October 29, 2026. He said the company acted with BitGo to freeze the funds and pledged to cooperate with the investigation. The company said the freeze also covered about $2 million worth of WLFI tokens, according to CoinTelegraph, citing Binance co-founder Yi He. The move comes as Binance investigates reports of a potential security issue, without explicitly confirming that funds were stolen. The company said it acted proactively, while available sources have not established that transfers linked to the incident were unauthorized.
Binance had verified the freezing of a total of $2.54 billion in assets linked to the incident as of October 29, according to the figure CoinTelegraph reported at the time. The platform said the total could rise as its partners track down more assets, and that its teams were working with law enforcement, token issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and industry partners. A later CoinTelegraph update at 00:52 UTC on October 30 said Binance had raised the confirmed figure to $3 billion. Binance said it would publish additional figures after verifying them. The difference between the two figures reflects the timing of the update: $2.54 billion was the confirmed total on October 29, while the $3 billion figure appeared in the later update.
Binance temporarily suspended deposits and withdrawals while conducting security checks, freezing funds and working with law enforcement, according to the Associated Press. The platform said user funds were "completely safe" and that it would publish updates through its official channels after verifying the information. In a statement reported by Reuters, Yi He said Binance would cover all losses from the hack, while the platform said it would resume withdrawals once the issue was fully resolved. Binance also temporarily suspended trading on its Binance Alpha platform as a precaution, Reuters reported. Available material did not specify when deposits and withdrawals would resume.
In a broader response by digital asset issuers, Tether said it had frozen nearly $1.57 billion in assets linked to the incident, while Circle had frozen more than $800 million, Reuters reported. Reuters quoted Yi He as saying that Ripple had also frozen about $200 million in funds after monitoring reports of a potential exploit linked to Binance. These figures are separate from the total Binance verified and do not represent an estimate of final losses. Arkham Intelligence's tracker showed about $5.84 billion in assets in wallets linked to the incident on October 29, but CoinTelegraph said final losses had not been determined. The value of assets tracked in the wallets therefore does not represent a confirmed amount of stolen funds.
The nature of USD1 provides important context for the freeze: World Liberty Financial says the token is redeemable one-to-one for U.S. dollars and backed by dollars and U.S. government money market funds. The company says reserve reports are published monthly for transparency. In May 2025, the company said USD1 had been selected to settle MGX's $2 billion investment in Binance in Abu Dhabi, according to Reuters. In cryptocurrency markets, Bitcoin fell 3.2% to below $79,000 on the evening of Thursday, October 29, according to the Associated Press. Reuters reported that Bitcoin later hit a six-week low of $77,646, while Ether fell to a two-month low of $2,238.76.