"Unprecedented"... 5 Trillion Won Withdrawn in Less Than Half a Day

[Anchor]

Among the virtual assets stolen by a North Korean hacking group from Binance, Bitcoin alone amounts to approximately 2 trillion won. This is three times the total export value of North Korea last year. Although Binance resumed deposits and withdrawals three days after the hack, anxious users withdrew 5 trillion won in less than half a day.

Here is a report from reporter Lee Gang.

[Reporter]

Cryptocurrency specialized media outlets such as Coindesk reported that the amount of Bitcoin stolen from Binance, the world's largest virtual asset exchange, by a North Korean-linked hacking group on October 29 was tallied at 18,270.

Calculated at the recent average market price of 78,000 dollars per coin, this equals 1.425 billion dollars, or approximately 1.9 trillion won.

This amount is a staggering three times North Korea's total merchandise export value of 460 million dollars last year.

It is 60 percent more than the amount held by Elon Musk's Tesla, which holds a large quantity of Bitcoin, and reaches 2.3 times the national holdings of El Salvador, which once designated Bitcoin as legal tender.

Not only Bitcoin, but other virtual assets such as Ethereum and stablecoins were also stolen in large scales during this hack, and the total stolen amount is estimated to reach 6.3 billion dollars, or about 8.4 trillion won.

[Ari Redbord / Cryptocurrency Expert: This incident is the largest "bank robbery" in human history. It was an attack on the cryptocurrency ecosystem at an unprecedented speed and scale.]

Binance stated that it has recovered or frozen 3 billion dollars out of the total 6.3 billion dollars in stolen assets.

Co-CEO Richard Teng publicly announced, "Binance, not the users, will shoulder the financial shock caused by the stolen funds."

However, as Binance resumed deposits and withdrawals starting from the afternoon of yesterday (November 1) KST, user anxiety has not easily subsided, with nearly 5 trillion won flowing out in just half a day.

(Video Editing: Park Choon-bae, Design: Hwang Se-yeon)

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