Hackers linked to North Korea pulled off the biggest crypto heist in history, draining billions from Binance in a hack that's bad for crypto confidence and puts fresh selling pressure on the market.

• Attackers got control of a Binance engineer's laptop, likely through a fake job recruiting scam that tricked them into running malicious code disguised as a coding test.
• Once inside, they drained multiple "hot" wallets (ones connected to the internet) across Ethereum, Bitcoin, Tether, USDC and dozens of other tokens, moving billions out in minutes.
• Roughly 40% of the stolen funds got frozen within an hour by Tether, Circle, Ripple and others, but several billion dollars got away clean.
• The thieves dumped stolen tokens fast and even borrowed more crypto against the stolen collateral before it could be frozen, briefly crashing some altcoin prices.
• Binance's "SAFU" insurance fund, meant to cover user losses, isn't audited and may not have enough set aside to fully cover a hack this size, raising doubts about how safe crypto exchanges really are.

Outlook: As the stolen funds slowly get laundered and sold off, expect ongoing selling pressure on crypto prices and more users pulling money off exchanges in favor of cold storage or regulated options like ETFs.