FBI blames North Korea for $6.3bn Binance heist as stolen funds are swapped into Ethereum
The FBI has finally answered the question hanging over the crypto world since Thursday night: who stole $6.3 billion from Binance? In a statement issued on Saturday, the bureau said plainly that North Korea was behind the raid, carried out by the group it calls TraderTraitor — the same outfit blamed for the $1.5 billion theft from Bybit in February last year.
Where the money is going
According to the FBI, the attackers are converting the stolen assets primarily into Ethereum, and are expected to launder them further through decentralised finance platforms and instant-swap services. The bureau has published the wallet addresses linked to the laundering operation and asked exchanges and service providers around the world to block any transaction touching them. The US Secret Service and the criminal-investigation arm of the Internal Revenue Service are working alongside the FBI on the trail.
Binance fights back
Binance, meanwhile, said on Saturday that it had used company money to buy replacement tokens covering 90 percent of what was stolen, with about $6.34 billion set aside in total for the loss. No customer will bear the financial impact, the exchange insists. A further update on Sunday put the replenished share at around 95 percent, and withdrawals began reopening in phases, starting in the morning. Deposits were never affected.
Not everyone in Washington is singing from the same sheet
Curiously, on the very same Saturday night, President Donald Trump softened the whole thing when reporters pressed him at a Halloween party in Florida. “We don’t know if it’s North Korea,” he said. “We’re looking at that.” So the FBI’s formal accusation now sits alongside the president’s caution — and North Korea itself has said nothing about the charge so far.
What happened first
It is worth recalling how this began: on 29 October, attackers drained billions from Binance’s internet-connected “hot wallets” in roughly twenty minutes, forcing the exchange to halt withdrawals. Blockchain investigators pointed at North Korea from the start, but the FBI statement is the first official confirmation. Analysts say the real test now is how much more can be clawed back beyond the roughly $2.85 billion already frozen on-chain.
