“The world’s leading bank robbers”. That’s what US officials are calling North Korean hackers, who stole nearly $2 billion of cryptocurrency in 2022.
Despite being one of the most closed societies in the world, North Korea has unexpectedly found itself in the middle of a cryptocurrency revolution, mostly out of necessity.
The regime’s ongoing efforts to become a nuclear state – which it believes will prevent it from falling, has put the country under two decades of heavy UN sanctions. Natural disasters, food shortages, and the COVID-19 pandemic, have only made matters worse.
With its very survival at stake, the regime turned to cryptocurrency to evade sanctions, investing in a group of highly skilled hackers that would go on to steal from banks and crypto exchanges – a crucial source of income for a country that only had a GDP of $25 billion in 2022.
It was reported that North Korea had also drastically stepped up its crypto mining efforts, specifically in Monero. On top of that, cyber security experts found that North Korean hackers were sneaking malware into peoples’ computers with the aim to mine Monero and send it back to the country.
So the question is why Monero in particular and what makes it so attractive to criminal organisations like the North Korean regime?
#northkorea #monero #cryptoexplained
0:00 Why is North Korea obsessed with Monero?
1:15 How North Korea uses Monero to evade international sanctions
3:25 The mysterious people who developed Monero
4:40 How Monero works as a currency
5:50 Other privacy cryptocurrencies to consider
7:22 Should you invest in Monero?
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