North Korea Entered the Top 5 Countries with the Largest Bitcoin Reserves - Report

The Arkham Intelligence platform reported that the Lazarus hacking group, associated with the North Korean authorities, controls 13,518 bitcoins. This has propelled North Korea into the top 5 largest holders of the first cryptocurrency.

Analysts in the report indicated that North Korea surpassed El Salvador (6,089 BTC) and the Kingdom of Bhutan (13,029 BTC) in this regard. The significant increase in BTC reserves was facilitated by the Lazarus hackers' attack on the cryptocurrency exchange Bybit, from which the fraudsters withdrew $1.4 billion. Later, Lazarus exchanged the stolen 500,000 ETH for BTC using the decentralized protocol THORChain, analysts report.

Besides BTC, Lazarus holds other cryptocurrencies worth about $30 million, including ETH, BNB, DAI, and BUSD.

It was previously reported that as of today, only 4% of the global population owns BTC.