Cryptocurrency buyers should be prepared for more and bigger threats after North Korea’s recent robbery of close to $1.5 billion of cryptocurrency from crypto exchange Bybit. That’s just one of the implications of a study appearing in the February 2025 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Economics.

The Lazarus Group, a cybercrime syndicate linked to North Korea, has long been a thorn in the side of the crypto industry. Since 2017, the group has stolen over $6 billion in digital assets, funneling the proceeds into the country’s ballistic missile program. The Bybit heist alone accounts for nearly a quarter of that total.

The cryptocurrency industry and those responsible for securing it are still in shock following Friday’s heist, likely by North Korea, that drained $1.5 billion from Dubai-based exchange Bybit, making the theft by far the biggest ever in digital asset history.