Cryptocurrency prices fell on Friday after Binance reported a potential security issue and said more than $2.5 billion in assets had been frozen.

Bitcoin dropped to a six-week low of $77,646, ether fell to a two-month low of $2,238.76 and BNB, a token originally launched as Binance Coin that can be used to pay Binance fees, was down more than 8% over the past 24 hours at $694, according to market aggregator CoinGecko.

Binance runs a secure asset fund for users, according to its website, which is a reserve held entirely in bitcoin that is intended to protect user assets in cases of security breaches.

Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, said on Thursday that $2.54 billion in crypto assets had been frozen as it investigated a potential security breach, with stablecoin issuers Circle and Tether freezing related assets.

Binance said the amount frozen could increase as it worked with law enforcement agencies, token issuers, blockchain intelligence firms and other industry partners to trace and freeze additional assets.

Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, who no longer runs the company, said in a post on X that the incident "looked like a hack."

Tether said it had frozen nearly $1.57 billion in assets linked to the incident, while Circle froze more than $800 million.

Binance said it was conducting security checks and would resume withdrawals once the issue was fully resolved. It added user funds remained safe and that teams were reviewing the incident.

The exchange also temporarily suspended trading on its Binance Alpha platform as a precaution.

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