In an alarming revelation by a recent study, a whopping $2.2 billion (£1.76 billion) worth of cryptocurrencies were stolen in 2024, with over half the figure attributed to North Korean hackers.

Chainalysis, the research firm behind the study, reports that the hermit kingdom's cybercriminals infiltrated the crypto space acting as remote IT workers, and managed to steal $1.3 billion of digital currencies, a figure more than double of last year's total.

This notable increase in crypto theft is up by 21% from last year. The increase is happening as Bitcoin's price more than doubles. It may possibly be as a result of likely support from incoming US president Donald Trump. He expected to be more crypto-friendly than his predecessor, Joe Biden.

The study points out the urgent need for the industry to tackle a more complex and evolving threat landscape, especially due to most of the thefts being from private key compromises, which control access to users' assets on crypto platforms.

Among the notable incidents this year, $300 million was stolen from DMM Bitcoin, a Japanese crypto exchange, and WazirX, an India-based crypto exchange, which lost nearly $235 million.

The US government maintains that North Korea uses such thefts to raise money and evade international sanctions. The US State Department has offered a reward of up to $5m for information on the alleged North Korean crypto theft scheme.

- CyberBeat