North korea

Elliptic says North Korean launderers created six throwaway meme tokens on NEAR between Nov. 5 and 7, moving about $430,000 of stolen Binance funds through homemade liquidity pools.

About 42 million stolen XRP, worth roughly $50 million, has been swapped mostly into bitcoin via THORChain, Elliptic said, lifting converted bitcoin from the Binance theft to about 1,650 BTC.

Binance has reopened withdrawals after its $6.3 billion North Korea hack, covered 95% of losses, and has reserves for the remaining 5%, with post-mortem reviews to stay open.

Chainalysis and TRM Labs have linked yesterday’s $6.3 billion Binance hack to North Korea’s TraderTraitor group.

The U.S. Treasury sanctioned ten people and one entity, including two Russian crypto middlemen, for laundering money from North Korean fake IT worker schemes that fund its weapons programs.

Lightning.news data shared with Bitcoin Magazine puts net 2026 crypto hack losses at roughly $2.35 billion after freezes and returns. September alone accounted for about $768 million, led by Bitget’s September 24 hot-and-warm wallet drain and Liquid Network’s Elements bug.

Bitget this week resumed customer withdrawals and within one hour, users had taken over 4,000 bitcoins off the exchange.

Crypto exchange Bitget has released more details on Thursday’s hack.

Bitrefill reported a cyberattack this month that led to stolen funds and limited customer data exposure, likely by North Korea’s Lazarus Group.

A Korean crypto employee was jailed after taking Bitcoin to recruit an officer to North Korea.