North Korea's Stolen Crypto Surpasses KRW 8 Trillion, Largest Single Hack Ever

It has been revealed that the amount of Bitcoin stolen from Binance by a hacking organization linked to North Korea exceeds Tesla's holdings, reaching three times North Korea's annual export volume.

According to cryptocurrency media outlets Coindesk and Cointelegraph, North Korea had stolen a total of 18,270 Bitcoins as of October 29. Applying a market price of 78,500 dollars per coin, this amounts to 1.4 billion dollars, or approximately 1.87 trillion won in Korean currency.

This is about 60 percent more than the Bitcoin held by Tesla and roughly twice the holdings of the El Salvador government, which has been accumulating Bitcoin at the national level.

The hacking organization linked to North Korea also massively stole other virtual assets, including Ethereum and stablecoins.

Combining all of these, the total stolen amount is approximately 6.3 billion dollars, or 8.04 trillion won in Korean currency, making it the largest single hack in the history of the virtual asset industry.

Two days ago (October 31), the FBI officially designated North Korea's hacking organization "TraderTraitor" as the mastermind behind this hacking incident.

Binance stated that it has recovered or frozen approximately 3 billion dollars, or 4 trillion won in Korean currency, of the total stolen assets on the blockchain.

However, as consecutive thefts of virtual assets occur, anxiety among holders of Bitcoin and other assets is growing.

(Reported by Jo Gi-ho, Video Editing by Lee Yu-jin, Design by Lee Jeong-ju, Produced by SBS Digital News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.