Binance exchange says it will cover customer losses as it scrambles to freeze affected assets, with about $3bn located so far
The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange has been hit by a record $6.3bn (£4.7bn) hack described as the biggest heist in history, with experts identifying North Korea as the likely culprit.
Binance said it would cover all customer losses as it froze $3bn of the affected assets.
Analysts said the exchange had been subjected to an unprecedented attack with “never-seen-before” laundering patterns as the hackers made off with assets worth billions of dollars.
Good for them tbh
Anyone still into crypto in 2026 deserves it ¯\(ツ)/¯
I would generalize this to any year really.
Money is made up. It’s only a problem when capitalism dictates who dies and who gets to eat. Either overthrow the gov and destroy capitalism or stop complaining about it when it works as intended.
It appears capitalism has decided that North Koreans get to eat today.
The whole idea of crypto was to cut out the banks. So the idiots holding their assets on an exchange like Binance (or FTX if anyone remembers those thieves) are just that, idiots.
I do at least get the idea of very temporarily passing the money through a currency exchange. But not it sitting long enough and trusted enough for hackers to steam $6B of it. Why in the world would anyone do that
Because they’re speculating and have open orders.
Does this mean monero will be going up? Should I buy some monero?
No. Historically crypto prices go down after a major hack. The hackers are selling right now, but Binance will buy slowly.
I don’t believe ANYTHING our government says. How do we know trumPedo didn’t give NK what they need so they could steal it and split it with him?
Agreed. I’m extremely skeptical this was a “hack” and more like a laundering-scheme. What was offered in return, I wonder.
Remember too that this is the company whose CEO Trump pardoned as the article notes:
The company was founded by the Chinese-born entrepreneur Changpeng Zhao, now a Canadian and United Arab Emirates citizen, who was jailed for four months in 2024 after pleading guilty to money laundering violations. Donald Trump pardoned him in 2025.
“This is almost certainly the largest theft of any kind in history,” said Tom Robinson, chief scientist at crypto consultancy Elliptic.
If it’s North Korea, and if they get to make use of it, it’d be over 1/6th of their GDP, which is pretty bonkers.
There was that massive bank fraud case in Moldova a few years back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Moldovan_bank_fraud_scandal
In 2014, $1 billion disappeared from three Moldovan banks: Banca de Economii, Unibank and Banca Socială.[3] This bank fraud was a coordinated effort involving all three banks working together to extract as much loan finance as possible from the banks without any obvious business rationale. Ilan Șor, a Moldovan businessman, together with Vladimir Plahotniuc and Serghei Iaralov “masterminded” the scam. Șor was chairman of the board at Banca de Economii (Savings Bank, BEM) up to 28 November 2014.[4]
Funds worth $1 billion were transferred to the United Kingdom and Hong Kong shell companies used to conceal the real owners of assets,[3][5] then deposited into Latvian bank accounts under the names of various foreigners.
The total loss from the scheme was equivalent to 12% of Moldova’s GDP.[6]
A carousel borrowing scheme was applied, loans at one bank were paid off with loans from another. The massive expansion of bank lending was funded with heavy borrowing from Russian companies.
That’d be a larger relative impact than the bank fraud was on Moldova (albeit on the receiving side, not the stolen-from side).
If it’s North Korea, and if they get to make use of it, it’d be over 1/6th of their GDP, which is pretty bonkers.
Kind of amazing when you put it into prospective. What is scarier is that much suddenly cash flow can help them purchase ‘stuff’ for ‘defense’
18.5% vs 12% of GDP, to make the comparison directly. 50% larger relatively, and in the opposite direction as you pointed out.
Based + Juchepilled
They’re going to cover $6.3b? They have enough cash or cryptocurrency on hand for that?
Also, what is NK even planning on doing with it? You can’t eat it. Russia wants you to use rubles, China wants you to use RMB. If you trade it for regular currency, you’ll be devaluing it. Is there some international black market that will take it?
Half of that was in stablecoins that were frozen, so they ‘only’ need to recover around 3b.
Binance, which allows users to buy, sell and trade digital assets, has 335 million registered users globally and had about $162.8bn in assets under custody as of the exchange’s 2025 annual report.
If you stole it it’s not like devaluing it means much to you lol
so their going to feed their population with the money right?
North Korea is actually going through an economic boom right now, interestingly. And that new money flowing into the country is being put, in large part to the 20×10 policy, meant to develop regions outside Pyongyang over the next 10 years.
So, while North Korea has a litany of problems, Kim Jong Un sitting on all that money like Smaug isn’t necessarily one of them. They are doing stuff with it.
they’re*
How is this so hard to get right?
thumb swiping to type is fought with peel
Probably autocorrect. How is that so hard to understand?
i say op spelt it that way because there some kind of sasquatch or yeti
edit: maybe a wookey
No, they’re going to use it to buy parts for weapons and other sanctioned stuff. It’s already dark web currency.
Their population is already fed decently. This will be used on infra most probably.
Isn’t it just safe to assume that anyone investing in crypto in 2026 that isn’t laundering money, or up to some other criminal activity is about to lose their investment anyway. This is just stealing from other criminals.
If they’re keeping it on an exchange, then they’re investing in promises, not investing in crypto.
How cool that the DPRK stole fake money.
If you can exchange for goods and services, it’s real enough.
You can’t though. No one takes crypto as payment for anything other than drugs.
It’s regulated as an asset, not a currency.
And why do these retards keep it on an ‘exchange’?
On Yelp you can filter by “Accepts Cryptocurrency”. It’s usually a restaurant owner who wants to avoid fees.
It can only do 10 transactions a second. It was never built for payment processing.
It’s a digital asset.
10 transactions a second
I can see you first heard about it quite a long time ago!
The base bitcoin can only do around 7-10 per seconds, intentionally for global nodes.
2s adds a layer of vulnerability. Ergo, it’s not the actual asset.
This is demonstrably false.
What is?
The first thing at least
What % of payment transactions are done by crypto?
No idea. How is that related?
Your entire post
Refute it then.
Crypto is not used as a currency, purchasing goods and services. It’s a speculative asset that’s used as a fiat debasement trade
https://ethereumadoption.com/built-on-ethereum?view=byEntity
https://defillama.com/stablecoins/ethereum
Most of it is owned by the same banks that caused the crash that bitcoin was created to avoid.
This is the only sorta-kinda correct thing you said. The complete co-opting of crypto by institutions is a bit worrisome, but if you’re truly worried about a “crash”, then hold stablecoins. The network itself is decentralized and nobody “owns” it. Your keys are your keys.
Pretty fucking ironic.
There’s nothing ironic. I can acquire crypto, send and receive it, without any tradfi involvement.
If it’s only drugs then it’s just one extra step. So long it’s acceptable for barter then there’s a way.
That applies to anything. But it’s still not actual currency.
