Trump reacts to the massive Binance hack and says his administration is 'investigating' whether North Korea was behind it

President Donald Trump reacted on Friday to the $6.3 billion hack that cryptocurrency exchange Binance experienced, saying he didn't know if the North Korean regime was behind the operation and announcing that "we're looking at that." During a Q&A session with reporters in the Oval Office, Trump commented: "It's a hack. That's the problem. You know the old-fashioned way when you used to sign a check … these are different people, never see the money anymore. So I've always felt it was a little bit dangerous. They say they have it pretty much under control. We'll see."

Trump's remarks came shortly after blockchain intelligence firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis revealed that the TraderTraitor group, linked to North Korea, was behind the cyberattack on Binance, resulting in the largest theft of its kind on record. TRM Labs also noted that several elements of the attack match patterns observed in previous operations attributed to North Korean hackers, such as the infamous $1.5 billion heist suffered last year by the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit.

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Binance confirms complex cyberattack that may have compromised $6.3 Billion

Williams Perdomo

The movement of funds began Thursday afternoon, when the attackers started withdrawing money from the platform's wallets and transferred it across various blockchain networks, including the XRP Ledger, Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tron, and Solana, over just 20 minutes.

Binance responded by temporarily suspending all deposits and withdrawals, while other companies in the sector froze assets related to the incident worth approximately $3 billion. The platform also stated that it will cover all losses caused by the incident.

"Rest assured that we are working nonstop to resolve this, to make the users whole and live up to their trust," Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said in a video posted on the social media platform X.