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submitted 7 hours ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/world@lemmy.world

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.

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[-] Tolc@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Based + Juchepilled

[-] Zier@fedia.io 2 points 3 hours ago

How cool that the DPRK stole fake money.

[-] floquant@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 3 hours ago

If you can exchange for goods and services, it's real enough.

[-] Zier@fedia.io 0 points 3 hours ago

That applies to anything. But it's still not actual currency.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 13 points 5 hours ago* (last edited 5 hours ago)

“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).

[-] frongt@lemmy.zip 3 points 4 hours ago

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?

[-] freely1333@reddthat.com 7 points 4 hours ago

If you stole it it’s not like devaluing it means much to you lol

[-] Snowclone@lemmy.world 7 points 6 hours ago

so their going to feed their population with the money right?

[-] Flower@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 hour ago

No, they're going to use it to buy parts for weapons and other sanctioned stuff. It's already dark web currency.

[-] M137@lemmy.today 4 points 2 hours ago

they're*

How is this so hard to get right?

[-] Tolc@lemmy.world 1 points 2 hours ago

Their population is already fed decently. This will be used on infra most probably.

[-] Ariselas@piefed.ca 3 points 7 hours ago

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.

this post was submitted on 31 Oct 2026
66 points (100.0% liked)

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