A crypto exchange sues a country, and the court actually issues a freeze order.
Bybit (a crypto exchange) says that in February 2025, the Lazarus Group (a North Korean hacking group) stole $1.5 billion. Now it has recovered $48.4 million and frozen $30.5 million—together only a small fraction of the stolen amount. The court granted the freeze order, targeting a hacker group supported by a state.
What’s most bewildering is enforcement. Who is the freeze order supposed to be served on? North Korea probably won’t send anyone to appear in court, and the hacking group certainly won’t cooperate with the investigation. The part of this piece of paper that can actually take effect in the real world may be even less than we imagine.
The theft happened a year and a half ago, and only in 2026 does this step occur. It isn’t that the law is intentionally slow—it’s that this is a cross-border, state-backed money-laundering network, so tracing it feels like using a dull knife to cut flesh. Every transfer record may go through more than a dozen countries, dozens of exchanges, and in the end becomes cash, or disappears into privacy coins.
What I’m thinking about isn’t whether Bybit can recover more. It’s whether ordinary people, seeing words like “lawsuit” and “freeze,” will think their money can be saved. In reality, a crypto exchange with massive resources and a team of lawyers might only be able to freeze amounts on the order of tens of millions. If ordinary people lose money, they likely won’t even make it to the first stop.
So for me, this news has only one takeaway: don’t treat recovery as a fallback.
Even if a contract gets liquidated, there may still be scraps left. But if you lose your private key—or it gets compromised—that’s the cleanest ending.
Keep your private key safe, faster than you can ever rely on any court to move.
Bybit (a crypto exchange) says that in February 2025, the Lazarus Group (a North Korean hacking group) stole $1.5 billion. Now it has recovered $48.4 million and frozen $30.5 million—together only a small fraction of the stolen amount. The court granted the freeze order, targeting a hacker group supported by a state.
What’s most bewildering is enforcement. Who is the freeze order supposed to be served on? North Korea probably won’t send anyone to appear in court, and the hacking group certainly won’t cooperate with the investigation. The part of this piece of paper that can actually take effect in the real world may be even less than we imagine.
The theft happened a year and a half ago, and only in 2026 does this step occur. It isn’t that the law is intentionally slow—it’s that this is a cross-border, state-backed money-laundering network, so tracing it feels like using a dull knife to cut flesh. Every transfer record may go through more than a dozen countries, dozens of exchanges, and in the end becomes cash, or disappears into privacy coins.
What I’m thinking about isn’t whether Bybit can recover more. It’s whether ordinary people, seeing words like “lawsuit” and “freeze,” will think their money can be saved. In reality, a crypto exchange with massive resources and a team of lawyers might only be able to freeze amounts on the order of tens of millions. If ordinary people lose money, they likely won’t even make it to the first stop.
So for me, this news has only one takeaway: don’t treat recovery as a fallback.
Even if a contract gets liquidated, there may still be scraps left. But if you lose your private key—or it gets compromised—that’s the cleanest ending.
Keep your private key safe, faster than you can ever rely on any court to move.