$6.3 billion in digital assets stolen: the Binance platform announces the gradual resumption of withdrawals for its clients, three days after the massive digital heist carried out by North Korea according to the FBI

The world's first cryptocurrency exchange platform, Binance, victim of a spectacular digital heist orchestrated according to the FBI by North Korea, announced on Sunday that some of its customers could resume making withdrawals. “The first round of withdrawals (...) is now open on the bitcoin network,” the company said on its official X account.

The company had previously indicated, still on “We are taking a phased approach by prioritizing tokens based on user demand data from the past week, so that each network-asset pair can be reinstated cautiously, once stability and security checks are completed before access is reopened,” she had explained. The platform, which suffered a massive hack on Thursday worth an estimated $6.3 billion (5.6 billion euros), had suspended withdrawals from its customers to stop the bleeding.

“User funds are safe. Binance will bear the financial impact of stolen funds, not our users,” Binance promised. During their withdrawal operations, “users may experience temporary delays or longer processing times due to traffic volume,” she warned.

"90%" of the stolen amount has been reconstituted The American Federal Police (FBI) claims to have identified, behind this unprecedented theft, the group of North Korean hackers known as TraderTraitor, and found that the thieves were converting the embezzled funds into Ether, the cryptocurrency of the Ethereum network. The scale of the Binance hack highlighted the ability of North Korea, hit by heavy international sanctions because of its nuclear and ballistic missile programs, to generate income illicitly. The event also revealed the vulnerability of the number 1 in the sector, and holders of cryptocurrencies could desert the platform as soon as they are able to make withdrawals.

Binance, which works to trace stolen assets with the help of other players in the cryptocurrency ecosystem, buys assets corresponding to those that have been siphoned off. She claimed on Saturday to have reconstituted “90%” of the stolen amount. The company is working to collect the remaining 10%.

She said these are “less liquid assets, which means it may take longer to acquire them in the required quantities.” World number one in digital currency trading volume, Binance claims 335 million users.

Machine-translated from French