Binance Theft | The Hackers Propping Up Kim's Failed State
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On the evening of 29 October 2026, around $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency was drained from Binance, the world’s biggest crypto exchange. Most of it went in about twenty minutes. It’s the largest theft of cryptocurrency on record, and the FBI has blamed a North Korean hacking unit it calls TraderTraitor. Pyongyang calls the accusation a political provocation.
This is the story of the Lazarus Group, the government hackers who have become one of the main things keeping Kim Jong Un’s regime afloat. Phil Thompson follows the trail from a single compromised laptop to the record-breaking heists at ByBit, Drift and Bitget. He looks at how stolen crypto is turned into real money through the “Chinese Laundromat”, and at the other ways North Korea earns cash: fake IT workers hired by Western companies, wig factories, and soldiers sent to fight for Russia in exchange for oil.
He also looks at where the money ends up, in a country whose legitimate exports barely reach $470 million a year but which is building hypersonic missiles and a nuclear-powered submarine.