The enormous crash that the bitcoin price has experienced in recent months has painful consequences for the North Korea of President Kim Jong-Un. Reuters has received reports from insiders that the assets stolen by Hermit Kingdom have decreased in value and that the financing of the weapons programmes has suffered.
What is North Korea doing with bitcoin?
Hermit Kingdom is a group of North Korean hackers who carry out cyber attacks on behalf of the country to steal cryptocurrencies and then sell them for bitcoin. They then try to sell that bitcoin for cash, which they hold outside the country.
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According to Chainalysis, North Korea also uses a variety of privacy tools to “whitewash” the coins they manage to acquire. However, according to the North Korean Embassy in London, this news about the country is complete nonsense.
“We have done nothing at all, and all these stories are just American propaganda,” the North Korean ambassador said. What exactly we should believe and what not is unclear, but the story surrounding North Korea and bitcoin is starting to get more and more exciting.
North Korea has looted $2 billion
If Reuters is to be believed, North Korea captured over $2 billion in 2019 with their cyber attacks. The bulk of that amount of money would be used by the country to fund their weapons programmes. Of course, the tricky thing about these kinds of rumours is checking to what extent they are true.
Often, the stories are based on little or nothing, and there is a chance that they are nonsense. In April this year, North Korea was accused of being responsible for the hacking of the Ronin Network on which Axie Infinity runs. A total of 620 million dollars worth of crypto was allegedly stolen.
Chainalysis estimates that North Korea’s loot from 49 hacks from 2017 to 2021 has dropped to $65 million, from $170 million at the start of 2022.
