Reports suggest that digital assets held by North Korea have lost at least 60% of their value, so funding for nuclear programs would get significantly compromised in the middle of crypto winter.
Although the crash in the price of Bitcoin concerns many exchanges, various reports suggested North Korea could feel the weight of the declining market the most since the country would share connections with many prominent crypto thefts to finance their nuclear projects.
Digital Assets and North Korea
The information comes from the Reuters news agency, which reflects on a series of reports linking North Korea with cybercrimes in the digital currency space, highlighting the extraction of at least USD 552 million from the bridge of the Ronin network and hacks aiming at relevant international exchanges.
The United Nations Organization revealed a report in February highlighting that North Korea’s nuclear and weapons projects got financed with digital currencies, assets in which they found a possibility to carry out those activities after the blockades and economic sanctions imposed by many entities and countries.
This theory got reinforced by many experts, including the member of the UN Security Council, Eric Pento-Voak, who assured that digital assets and these crimes executed against entities in the sector have been essential for North Korea to avoid sanctions.
However, official representatives denied that North Korea has taken part in or has connections to the attacks carried out against exchanges and crypto projects, calling such allegations nonsense accusations that intend o discredit the Asian country.
Market Decline and Nuclear Projects
According to the crypto funds of North Korea, a report highlighted by Chainalysis confirms that the currencies held by the nation linked to attacks carried out between 2020 and 2021 suffered considerable losses since they went from USD 170 million at the beginning of the year to at least USD 65 million at the current exchange rate.
On the other hand, as for the funds obtained by the Ronin network attack, the USD 552 million extracted by the Lazarus group got now valued at USD 230 million. This information got confirmed by the TRM Labs analysis team, although it detailed that most of the extracted ETH got exchanged for BTC at the time. This situation makes it hard to highlight the margin of losses capitalized by the North Korean nation.
Finally, regarding nuclear programs, this Crashdown in the country’s reserves could become a blow to support the linked costs due to the difficulties in acquiring the respective material.
By: Jenson Nuñez
