[Anchor]
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has pointed to North Korea as the culprit behind the massive theft of over 6 billion dollars, equivalent to more than 8 trillion Korean won, from Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange. Circumstantial evidence has also been detected showing that North Korean hackers laundered the funds to cash out the stolen cryptocurrencies.
Reporter Kim Minpyo has the details.
[Reporter]
On October 31 local time, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) stated that North Korea was behind the theft of more than 6 billion dollars in cryptocurrency from Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange.
This officially confirms the suspicions raised by private firms pointing to North Korea since the early stages of the incident.
The FBI specifically identified the North Korean hacking group TraderTraitor as the perpetrator.
TraderTraitor is known as an elite organization created under North Korea's intelligence agency approximately 10 years ago with the goal of stealing cryptocurrencies.
The FBI stated that it has detected signs of them converting the stolen assets primarily into Ethereum, and anticipates additional money laundering activities of this nature.
[Ari Redbord / Cryptocurrency Expert : North Korea wants to convert these funds from crypto to fiat as quickly as possible to use them for weapon acquisition or purchasing supplies.]
The North Korean hackers were also so meticulous that they immediately swapped the stolen cryptocurrencies into assets that could not be frozen, escaping with 2.4 billion dollars, worth about 3 trillion won.
The Wall Street Journal reported that even after realizing the hacking, Binance officials could do nothing but watch in horror as assets drained from accounts.
Binance stated that rather than passing the hacking losses onto customers, it covered 95 percent of the losses using internal funds and is sequentially resuming withdrawals for major cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Ethereum, and BNB.
Regarding the FBI's announcement, U.S. President Trump stated, "If North Korea is behind this, we will discuss this matter with North Korea."
(Video by Jeong Yong-hwa)
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