Blockchain experts blame Kim Jong Un's elite hackers for the $6.3bn Binance crypto raid, the 'largest heist in history'

North Korea's TraderTraitor hacking unit drained $6.36 billion from Binance wallets across six blockchain networks — XRP Ledger, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tron and Solana — in roughly 20 minutes on Thursday evening, with the breach apparently originating from a single compromised engineer's laptop. Binance co-CEO Richard Teng confirmed the exchange has ring-fenced over $6.34 billion in company funds to make every customer whole. Tom Robinson, Elliptic's chief scientist, called it 'almost certainly the largest theft of any kind in history', eclipsing even the $1bn looted from Iraq's central bank by Saddam Hussein in 2003. President Trump told reporters from the Oval Office that his administration is investigating but said 'we don't know' whether North Korea is responsible.

Crypto firms managed to freeze around $3bn of the stolen assets, but TraderTraitor still controls $2.4bn 'beyond any issuer's reach', TRM Labs warns.

North Korea's hackers breached the exchange after more than 50 attempts, reportedly deploying AI to identify unknown software vulnerabilities and impersonating employers with fictitious job offers to infiltrate staff.

Crypto theft is believed to account for half of North Korea's foreign currency earnings, bankrolling Kim Jong Un's nuclear programme and a stockpile of roughly 50 warheads.