The FBI has accused North Korean-linked hackers of conducting one of the largest known thefts of cryptocurrency — worth some $1.5 billion from a Dubai-based firm.

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 Federal Bureau of Investigation said on Wednesday that North Korea was responsible for the theft of approximately $1.5 billion in virtual assets from cryptocurrency exchange ByBit. The agency said it refers to this specific North Korean malicious cyber activity as "TraderTraitor.