Binance Smart Chain Halts Amid Fears of 'Potential Exploit' as BNB Token Sheds 4%

Sam is a reporter at CoinDesk focused on decentralized technology, DeFi and DAOs. He owns ETH, BTC and MATIC.

Binance Smart Chain hit the breaks Thursday after the blockchain with ties to the world's largest crypto exchanged suffered what it called a "potential exploit" that on-chain evidence suggests could be in range of $500 million.

"Due to irregular activity we're temporarily pausing BSC," BNB Chain tweeted from its official account, later confirming that the activity was a "potential exploit," that it characterized as contained.

The exact nature of the attacks not immediately clear but its shadow rocked BSC's native BNB token, which after a sleepy day of trading dipped to $280.40 from $293.10, according to CoinMarketCap, which BINANCE owns.

On-chain data shows that this afternoon two massive withdrawals of 1 million BSC tokens from BSC token hub by an attacker that nabbed crypto assets with cross-chains swaps, bridges, and borrows. Regardless, BNB's Twitter promised "all funds are safe" and said it will "help freeze any transfers."

Twitter sleuths point out that Tether – the largest stablecoin provider – has blacklisted the offending address, suggesting that the firm suspects the movement of tokens was the result of an attack rather than something more benign.

BNB was down about 3.6% to $282.46 on Thursday afternoon after reports of the hack surfaced.

This is a developing story and will be updated.