Binance: $6.3 billion hacked. Suspicions point to North Korea

According to the United States and the UN, North Korean agents have for years been managing to get their hands on billions of dollars’ worth of digital assets, using complex money-laundering networks to convert stolen cryptocurrencies into US dollars or Chinese yuan, thereby circumventing international sanctions.

“This is causing enormous damage to the sector,” explains Tian Zeng, CEO of the cryptocurrency-specialist hedge fund Third Eye. “The fact that these attacks continue to occur makes the sector risky, especially at a time when new artificial intelligence models are being released every two weeks.” Responding to the attacks is becoming difficult, due to the speed with which the new models identify vulnerabilities in systems.

“Binance is so important that any blow to confidence in it translates into a blow to confidence in the entire sector,” explains Fredrick Collins, CEO and co-founder of the cryptocurrency data platform Velo Data. At the same time, the company in question is one of the most controversial in that opaque and unregulated segment of the financial world centred on cryptocurrencies.

According to court documents relating to the proceedings against him, over the years Binance has been used by Russian money launderers, Islamic State militants and countries subject to sanctions such as Iran. The founder himself, having agreed to a four-month prison sentence as part of a plea bargain with the US justice system, no longer holds any operational roles.

This incident did not prevent him from turning to World Liberty Financial, a stablecoin company controlled by the Trump family, to complete a 2 billion deal and, shortly afterwards, receive a pardon from the President of the United States.

The growth of cryptocurrencies, which began almost 20 years ago, has been punctuated by crimes committed both by companies in the sector and against them. The best-known case is probably the collapse in November 2022 of FTX, the platform founded by Sam Bankman-Fried, which occurred partly due to Zhao’s active involvement. Until yesterday, the largest cyberattack in the cryptocurrency sector had been the one suffered by the Bybit platform in February 2025, when tokens worth almost $1.5 billion were stolen.

Following the announcement of the cyberattack on Binance, Bitcoin fell below $77,000 for the first time in over a month. Other tokens, including Ether, Solana and XRP, also recorded losses.