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.

The FBI referred to the attack as “TraderTraitor,” a malicious campaign linked to North Korean state-sponsored hackers the Lazarus Group.

North Korean hackers took just two minutes to make off with $1.5bn (£1.2bn) in cryptocurrency, cyber security researchers believe, in the single biggest heist in history.