North Korea ‘industrialized’ crypto theft, laundered billions: CertiK

CertiK says North Korea-linked hackers stole about 60% of the value lost to crypto hacks in 2025, with proceeds used to help fund the regime’s nuclear and ballistic missile programs, highlighting the country’s growing reliance on digital assets to generate hard currency.

The findings, shared with Cointelegraph on Tuesday, come from a new Skynet report that attributes roughly $2.06 billion of an estimated $3.4 billion in 2025 crypto security losses to groups tied to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, or DPRK, across 79 of 656 incidents documented that year.

Between 2016 and early 2026, DPRK-linked actors stole an estimated $6.75 billion in cryptocurrency across 263 documented incidents, the report says, citing findings by independent onchain researcher Taylor Monahan.

CertiK’s analysis concludes that North Korea has “industrialized” crypto theft into a core state revenue mechanism, with open-source estimates showing how these operations represent a substantial share of the regime’s external income, as digital