Binance said it has seen more than $3.6 billion (£2.7bn) in net outflows since it began restoring withdrawal services, following what is believed to be the biggest-ever theft of cryptocurrency, which authorities linked to North Korea.

The company said it has seen $4.65bn in withdrawals and approximately $1.01bn in deposits since the incident, with net outflows representing 2.1 percent of the $171bn in its total assets under management.

Record crypto theft

The incident late on 29 October affected approximately $6.3bn in funds, roughly half of which have been frozen.

The company said it has covered about 95 percent of the stolen funds, with the remaining 5 percent consisting of smaller tokens outside the 10 most widely used cryptocurrencies, whose assets are less liquid and will take longer to source.

“We continue working with industry partners to complete the remaining acquisitions,” the company stated.

Binance said an initial investigation found hackers had used a compromised laptop belonging to an engineer as a starting point, but said it had since found “additional points of breach”.

The FBI attributed the attack to North Korea, with multiple cyber-security companies saying that it appeared to have been carried out by a group called TraderTraitor, known in the security industry as Lazarus Group.

The same group is believed to have stolen a then-record $1.5bn from exchange ByBit last year, as part of the North Korean government’s ongoing campaign of crypto-thefts that it uses to fund missile programmes and other initiatives.