North Korea becomes the world's third-largest bitcoin owner

With 13,562 bitcoins (worth about $1.14 billion), North Korea is second only to the United States, which owned 198,109 bitcoins as of January

North Korea is now the world’s third-largest bitcoin owner with 13,562 bitcoins (worth about $1.14 billion).

According to the Bitcoin.com portal, based on data from crypto security firm Arkham Intelligence, the North Korean government currently owns 13,562 bitcoins.

This puts the country's bitcoin holdings behind only the United States, which owns 198,109 bitcoins as of January, and the United Kingdom, which holds 61,245 bitcoins.

Earlier this year, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) said that the Lazarus hacker group, which is believed to be backed by the North Korean government, stole $1.5 billion worth of tokens from the Dubai-based trading platform Bybit.

This incident was considered the largest cryptocurrency theft in history. The stolen tokens were mostly ethereum and a large amount was later converted to bitcoin, Bitcoin.com noted.

"Unfortunately, this transaction was manipulated through a sophisticated attack. As a result, the hacker took control of the affected ethereum cold wallet and transferred the entire balance to an unknown address," Bybit said on social media.

Cold wallets are offline cryptocurrency storage facilities that are said to be less vulnerable to attacks.

Following the incident, Bybit, the world's second-largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, launched a campaign to track down the stolen funds and pledged to reward 10% of the recovered funds.

However, according to BBC, as of March 10, only $40 million has been recovered.

According to Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, the Lazarus group has been involved in some of the largest cryptocurrency thefts in history, including the theft of $1.34 billion worth of tokens last year, which accounts for 61% of all cryptocurrency stolen in 2024.