Elliptical The analysis reveals that North Korea-linked hackers are believed to have stolen more than $2 billion in crypto assets so far this year, which would be the largest annual total on record, with about 3 months still to go before the end of 2025. But to put all that in perspective, the overall crypto market capitalization has reached over $4 trillion, so the rate of Theft might also have increased proportionately.
Nonetheless, it still appears problematic that this now brings the known cumulative value of cryptoassets stolen by the regime to over $6 billion.
According to the UN and various other international government agencies, these funds play “a critical role in financing North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile development programs.” It is also quite difficult to get more details about the so-called rogue state due to its highly secretive nature and being largely cut off from the rest of the world.
Worryingly, the actual figure could be even higher, depending on the full update.
Attributing cyberthefts to North Korea is not an exact science, the report said.
As explained in the report, Elliptic and other experts use a combination of blockchain analytics, “observed laundering patterns, and intelligence sources to establish attribution.”
The blockchain intelligence company added:
“We are aware of many other flights that share some of the characteristics of North Korea-related activities, but we lack sufficient evidence to definitively attribute them. Other flights likely go unreported and remain unknown.”
This year’s losses are believed to be largely due to the theft of $1.46 billion from digital currency exchanges in February. Bybit.
Other thefts publicly attributed to North Korea this year include those suffered by LND.fi, WOO X and Seedify. Elliptic added in its latest research report that it has attributed more than 30 additional hacks to North Korea so far in 2025.
As we enter the final months of this year, these numbers will be much higher once all the statistics are compiled. Crypto and financial crime is on the rise due to the rise of AI and other emerging digital technologies. In the same way that legitimate actors leverage the latest technological advances to streamline their operations, malicious entities also use sophisticated methods, enhanced by AI algorithms, to commit damaging security breaches.
North Korea, in particular, is known for orchestrating some of the most malicious hacks, such as the one suffered last year by crypto exchange WazirX. The attack was so severe that the stock market has still not recovered. It’s also worth noting that certain platforms tend to receive much more support from ecosystem participants, such as ByBit (as it may be more of a systemically important exchange for the Web3 and crypto sector).
