Last year, the theft of $1.5bn from the Bybit exchange set a record that many thought would stand for a long time. It lasted barely a year. On Thursday, Binance, the world's largest crypto exchange, announced that $6.

3bn of digital assets had been affected by an attack that may be the biggest hack in history, more than four times the Bybit loss. The company says that about half of the assets have been frozen, while many of the rest remain in the hands of the attackers. Early checks suggest the entry point was modest: an engineer's compromised laptop, which apparently allowed unauthorised withdrawals. Binance has promised to cover every loss and has disabled withdrawals on Binance.

com until its systems are confirmed to be secure. Its American arm, Binance.US, says it was not affected. The attribution points across the Pacific.

Two analytics firms, TRM Labs and Chainalysis, have linked the incident to a North Korean unit known as TraderTraitor, the group already blamed for the Bybit theft. TRM's Ari Redbord called the attack a watershed moment, noting that the thief still holds a vast sum, so tracing is far from finished. Binance has not directly addressed the North Korea link, saying only that it is working with law enforcement. The response also revealed how centralised the "decentralised" industry can be.