Cryptocurrency stolen by North Korea falls in price by $400 million

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Experts at the Reuters news agency claim that stocks of cryptocurrency stolen by North Korean state hackers have fallen in price amid the market crash.

Developing circumstances may posefinancing of North Korea's weapons programs is at risk. In particular, the creation of nuclear weapons. The North Korean regime has been linked to numerous cyberattacks aimed at stealing digital currencies.

According to two unnamed sources inSouth Korean government, due to extensive sanctions and the current situation in the cryptocurrency market, North Korea's income from cryptocurrencies has been greatly depleted. Accurate data is difficult to obtain, but according to Chainalysis, holdings of North Korea-linked wallets generated in 2020-2021 fell from $170 million at the beginning of 2022 to $65 million.

American authorities have tiedspring hacking of the Ronin Network Ethereum sidechain, used primarily in the Axie Infinity game, with North Korean hackers from the Lazarus group. As a result of the hack, assets worth $625 million were stolen. However, now these assets, as Reuters experts say, are worth about a third of the original amount - about $230 million. Most of the stolen money was transferred to bitcoins (BTC), which makes it difficult to determine the exact scale of losses.

Previously, American government departmentsexpressed concern that more and more IT specialists from North Korea are trying to get jobs in cryptocurrency companies by posing as US developers.

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