Crypto giant Binance hit by 'largest hack in history'

In a series of posts, Yi He, Binance's co-chief executive, thanked various cryptocurrency issuers for freezing the assets.

"Safety first: withdrawals are currently disabled until the environment is confirmed to be secure," she said.

Two other major crypto platforms, Tether and Circle, said they have frozen a total of about $2.4bn of assets in response to the potential Binance hack.

Circle chief executive Jeremy Allaire said his firm is "closely tracking reports of a potential exploit involving Binance" and that his company has frozen more than $800m in assets linked to the incident.

Circle is the issuer and co-creator of the USDC, one of the world's largest US dollar-backed cryptocurrencies.