Trump disputes the FBI and says 'we don't know if it's North Korea' after the record $6.3bn Binance crypto heist
The FBI warned that those responsible for the Binance raid are converting stolen funds into Ethereum and laundering them through decentralised finance platforms.Kim Jong Un, whose country's TraderTraitor unit carried out the Binance raid using access gained through a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop, according to investigators.
Trump openly broke with his own FBI at a Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago on Saturday night, saying 'we don't know if it's North Korea' just hours after the bureau formally blamed Pyongyang's TraderTraitor unit for the $6.3bn Binance heist. Asked by reporters about the findings, Trump said his administration was 'learning about' the case and added 'if it is, we'll talk to North Korea about it.'
The FBI, working with the Secret Service and IRS Criminal Investigation, named TraderTraitor — linked to the wider Lazarus Group — as the same unit behind last year's $1.5bn Bybit hack.
Hackers moved roughly $6.36bn out of Binance wallets across ten blockchains in about 20 minutes, with the FBI warning funds are being converted into Ethereum ahead of further laundering.
Binance says it has replenished 90% of the stolen assets and will absorb all losses so customers are not out of pocket, with trading expected to resume within days.
