Cryptocurrency buyers should be prepared for more and bigger threats after North Korea’s recent robbery of close to $1.5 billion of cryptocurrency from crypto exchange Bybit. That’s just one of the implications of a study appearing in the February 2025 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

North Korean hackers have stolen $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency in a single heist, making it the largest crypto hack on record, security experts told CNN.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has accused North Korea of a major cyber theft, stealing around $1.5 billion in digital assets from cryptocurrency exchange ByBit. The incident marks the biggest heist in history, beating the previous record of $1 billion stolen by Saddam Hussein from Iraq's central bank before the 2003 war.