FBI Seizes $1.2bn of Binance Hack Loot as US Blames North Korea

The FBI has seized more than $1.2bn (£910m) of cryptocurrency stolen from Binance last month. The theft involved assets worth more than $6.3bn (£4.7bn), in what has been described as one of the "largest bank heists in human history".

US authorities said a North Korean hacking unit called TraderTraitor was responsible. The theft was reportedly completed in less than 20 minutes. It is believed to be the largest cryptocurrency hack to date, surpassing the $1.5bn (£1.13bn) stolen when the Bybit exchange was targeted last year.

US freezes more than $2.7bn

The US government and the private sector have collectively frozen more than $2.7bn (£2bn) of the funds stolen from Binance. The Department of Justice said on Thursday that it had obtained court authorisation to seize or restrain in excess of $1.2bn of that total.

In such cases, the US government typically files a claim of forfeiture with a judge. The judge will then determine who has a legitimate claim to the recovered funds.

Binance says users are covered

On Thursday, Binance said it had "completed coverage of assets impacted in the security incident" and thanked users for their "patience and understanding". The company said it had published a "Proof of Reserves snapshot". It added that once the zero-knowledge proof is generated, users can independently verify that their assets are backed at a minimum of 1:1.

Binance, one of the world's biggest platforms for trading digital assets, previously said that 90% of stolen assets have been replenished. It said the company will "absorb the financial impact" of the stolen funds and not pass these on to their users.

Speaking after the hack, Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said the company's initial investigation suggested the incident "may have started with a compromised DevOps engineer's laptop". In a post on X, Mr Teng added: "To be clear: the attacker did not simply use one engineer's permissions, and this was not a single 'one-click' action. It involved a more complex attack process."

SAFU cover and what it means

Binance said its users, of which the company claims there are 335 million worldwide, are covered by the Secure Asset Fund for Users (SAFU). The fund was set up by the company in 2018 to protect users assets in "extreme cases", including security breaches or platform-level incidents.

For Nigerian crypto users, the case puts exchange security, asset recovery and user protection arrangements in focus.