North Korea on Tuesday dismissed as “absurd rhetoric” the United States' allegation that a North Korean state-backed hacking unit stole $6.3 billion (yaani kareeb ₹5.5 lakh crore) from Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, while Binance's co-chief executive said customer outflows had normalised and the company was in “very strong financial health”, Reuters reported from Seoul and Singapore on November 3.
Kim Yo Jong, the influential sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said the allegations proved Washington remained hostile towards Pyongyang, according to a report on Tuesday by North Korea's state news agency KCNA. “The FBI is trying to brand the DPRK as a ‘cyber criminal state’, claiming that it obtained information that a hacking organization ‘supported’ by the DPRK was involved in the incident,” KCNA quoted her as saying. “But the US assertion is absurd rhetoric and nothing new.”
Kim called the allegation “a grave political provocation against the DPRK” and accused the United States of misleading international public opinion “as if all the cyber crimes in different parts of the world are our deeds”. She said North Korea had “issues to reconsider” over what she called the United States' hostile attitude, without elaborating. Pyongyang has not publicly responded to US President Donald Trump's overtures, made earlier this year, to resume summit diplomacy.
The denial is North Korea's first direct response to the FBI's attribution, announced at the weekend, which blamed the theft — carried out on or about October 29 and possibly the largest financial heist on record — on TraderTraitor, a North Korean state-sponsored hacking unit. Awaaz Punjab reported the FBI attribution and the first wave of withdrawals in earlier stories; the FBI called on cryptocurrency businesses to block transactions involving wallets tied to the group.
The FBI's attribution of the record theft to North Korea's TraderTraitor unit was reported by Awaaz Punjab earlier this week. Read: FBI blames North Korea's TraderTraitor for the $6.3 billion Binance theft
At Binance, co-CEO Richard Teng told a Hong Kong Fintech Week event on Tuesday that withdrawals spiked in the first 24 hours after the hack, as expected, but had since normalised. “In the first 24 hours, there was a spike in terms of withdrawals, as can be expected. But after that … it's pretty much normalised,” Teng said. “The company is in very strong financial health,” he added, saying 95% of the affected tokens had been replenished and “this is something that we can cover”.
Customers had withdrawn a net $4.72 billion (yaani kareeb ₹4.15 lakh crore) as of Monday, Reuters reported. Binance said in an X post earlier on Tuesday that it was seeing “hourly deposits exceed withdrawals”, which it said reflected improving user activity and stabilising flows. The exchange, which froze withdrawals for more than two days after the hack before resuming them on Sunday morning for some assets, reopened withdrawals for more assets on Tuesday, and on Monday launched a “community appreciation campaign” — fee rebates, rewards for eligible users reaching at least $10,000 in cumulative trading volume, and annual percentage rates of up to 10% on certain yield products — running through November 21.
A revenue stream under scrutiny
North Korea faces growing scrutiny over cryptocurrency theft, which analysts say is a key source of funds for its weapons programmes. Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic estimates North Korean hackers have stolen cryptocurrency worth $7.6 billion (yaani kareeb ₹6.7 lakh crore) this year, more than in any previous year, while Chainalysis estimated 89% of crypto hack losses in 2026 were linked to North Korea, up from 15% in 2021. South Korea's central bank estimated North Korea's gross domestic product at $35.09 billion in 2025, meaning the Binance theft alone could equal about a sixth of its economic output.
Analysts in Seoul said Pyongyang's unusually swift response likely reflected concern that the allegation could lead to tighter efforts against revenue streams North Korea is accused of using for weapons. “With sanctions already in place, cryptocurrency theft has become one of North Korea's key channels for securing funds for regime maintenance and weapons development,” said Lim Eul-chul, a professor at Kyungnam University's Institute for Far Eastern Studies, adding that additional US measures against crypto wallets, laundering networks and exchanges could choke off that source. What happens next turns on whether Washington follows the attribution with new sanctions or wallet-blocking action, and on whether investigators can trace and freeze the stolen assets as they are converted and moved.