Kim Yo-jong, the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, has publicly rejected the FBI's accusations that Pyongyang was involved in the $6.3 billion hack of the world's largest crypto exchange Binance, characterizing the US intelligence investigation as a "political provocation" and a "fabrication."
According to Kim Yo-jong, the North Korean side is "closely monitoring" the development of the situation. The statements came against the backdrop of the state agency KCNA previously calling the accusations of involvement in the theft a "fabrication," while US agencies continue to insist on freezing wallets linked to the stolen funds on exchanges.
Details of the FBI Investigation
On October 29, attackers withdrew funds from Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange. The incident is already being called the largest cryptocurrency theft in history. On October 31, the FBI attributed responsibility to the TraderTraitor group, which had previously been linked to the theft of $1.5 billion from the Bybit exchange in February 2025.
According to the FBI, the hackers are converting a significant portion of the stolen assets into Ethereum (ETH). The Bureau published the addresses of the linked wallets and urged crypto companies to refrain from processing transactions through them. Analytics platforms TRM Labs and Chainalysis also linked the attack to North Korea.
Washington's Position
While the exchange bore the losses, Binance resumed withdrawals after announcing that it had covered about 95% of customer losses from its own reserves. In Washington, the comments were restrained. Speaking at Mar-a-Lago, President Donald Trump tried to downplay the significance of the attack: "I'm not worried. We're looking into the situation." He also added that the US does not yet have confirmation that North Korea is actually behind the attack.
The key question now is whether exchanges will manage to freeze the funds before they are withdrawn. The timeline of the recent Bitget hack showed how quickly the alleged North Korean thieves operate.
Cryptalist Analysis: The escalation of rhetoric between Pyongyang and Washington over the largest hack in history creates additional uncertainty for the market, increasing reputational and regulatory risks for centralized exchanges. The speed of converting stolen assets into ETH and the coordination of blockchain analysts with law enforcement are becoming a key factor in whether the funds can be recovered — investors should closely monitor the status of the listed addresses and the practice of compliance checks on exchanges.