The $6.4 Billion Heist: Investigators Tie the Binance Hack to North Korea — What It Means for Markets and American Security
Blockchain analysts say Pyongyang's TraderTraitor unit pulled off the largest crypto theft on record in about 20 minutes. Binance says it will cover every loss. Roughly $3 billion has been frozen — and the rest is the real story.
By Clara Hughes
The largest cryptocurrency theft ever recorded took about 20 minutes. Beginning at 20:05 UTC on Thursday, Oct. 29 — 4:05 p.m. Eastern — roughly $6.36 billion in digital assets was moved out of wallets belonging to Binance, the world's biggest crypto exchange, across ten blockchains, according to blockchain intelligence firm TRM Labs. Most of it moved within about 20 minutes. Rival firm Elliptic puts the total at $6.43 billion across 11 blockchains; Binance's own estimate is about $6.3 billion; Chainalysis says $6.4 billion. Whatever the final figure, it dwarfs the previous record. TRM says the haul is about four times the $1.5 billion stolen from the Bybit exchange in February 2025 — a theft the FBI attributed to a North Korean state hacking group known as TraderTraitor. Now the same name is back. TRM Labs attributes the Binance attack to TraderTraitor "with high confidence." Chainalysis co-founder and CEO Jonathan Levin said his firm assessed the hack was likely carried out by the same unit, citing links to previous attacks, CNBC reported. Pangolin Intelligence told CNN it also suspects North Korea, according to Decrypt. One important caveat, flagged by Elliptic: as of its analysis, no government or law