North Korea Converts $124 Million in Stolen Binance Funds Into Bitcoin

A North Korean hacking group has converted about $124 million of the crypto stolen from Binance into Bitcoin, Elliptic said. Money laundering tied to the theft is accelerating as XRP, following Solana, is also being swapped into Bitcoin.

In a blog post on Nov. 6, blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said 16 blockchains, more than 20,000 wallets and at least 36 services had been used to launder funds since the Binance hack. Related transactions have exceeded 65,000.

As of Nov. 6, about 1,650 BTC, worth roughly $124 million, had been converted from other stolen assets into Bitcoin and stored in new wallets, according to Elliptic. That was about double the level a day earlier. Most of the increase came from XRP being converted into Bitcoin.

Most of the stolen SOL has now been sold, swapped or moved to other blockchains. Much of it was ultimately converted into Bitcoin. XRP also began moving in earnest on Nov. 5, with about 42 million XRP, worth roughly $50 million, drained and mostly exchanged into Bitcoin.

Mixing activity to make the funds harder to trace is also continuing. Since Nov. 1, about 33 BTC has been routed through Wasabi-style CoinJoin transactions, while about $1.1 million worth of Ether and SOL passed through Privacy Cash.

Of the total $643 million stolen in the hack, about $285 million has been frozen, while about $311 million remains in addresses linked to the theft.

Elliptic said the main BTC and ETH holdings have not yet moved. The firm added that ETH could later be broken into smaller amounts, converted into Bitcoin and cashed out through over-the-counter, or OTC, brokers.