Binance Hack: Theft Equivalent to 19% of North Korea’s GDP

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The Binance hack, attributed to the North Korean group TraderTraitor, alone represents the equivalent of almost a fifth of North Korea's annual gross domestic product (GDP). For the Pyongyang regime, whose trade is severely limited by international sanctions, cryptocurrency theft has become a major source of foreign currency.

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According to the Bank of Korea, North Korea's GDP reached approximately $32.93 billion in 2025. The $6.36 billion stolen from Binance, according to TRM Labs, therefore represents 19.3%.

The blockchain analysis company attributes the attack to TraderTraitor, a group of North Korean hackers, without this responsibility having been officially established.

Around $3 billion was frozen thanks to the mobilization of the crypto ecosystem. TRM Labs nevertheless estimates that the hacker still controls more than $2.4 billion in ETH and BTC, beyond the reach of freezes carried out by issuers.

A significant sum for North Korea, if we consider the fact that exports of North Korean goods, for example, reached only $469 million in 2025, or 13.5 times less than the amount of piracy.

North Korean hackers had already set a record in 2025, with $2.02 billion in stolen cryptocurrencies, according to Chainalysis. Since the start of its estimates, the company attributed them to $6.75 billion in cumulative thefts before the Binance attack.

The Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team (MSMT), a group of 11 states including France and the United States, estimates that stolen cryptocurrencies represented around a third of Pyongyang's foreign exchange earnings in 2024.

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This proportion, calculated from the value of assets during the flights, was however lower than in 2023. North Korea recorded an increase in revenues from arms sales and trade with Russia.

Since 2016 and 2017, UN sanctions have prohibited North Korea from exporting coal, minerals, textiles or seafood. Its oil imports are capped and its banks were excluded from the SWIFT network in 2017.

Machine-translated from French