North Korean hackers stole this year  £1.76bn ($2.2bn) in Cryptocurrencies according to research firm Chainanalysis. Some theft appear to be linked to North Korean hackers posing as remote IT workers to infiltrate crypto and other technology firms, amid nearly doubling of the bitcoin prices, as incoming US president Donald Trump is expected to be more crypto-friendly.

The majority of crypto stolen this year was due to compromised private keys- which are used to control access to users’ assets on crypto platforms. But the most significant incidents this year included the theft of the equivalent of $300m, in bitcoin from Japanese crypto current y exchange, DMM Bitcoin, and the loss of nearly $235m from WazirX, an Indian-based crypto exchange.

Only last week a federal court in St Louis indicted 14 North Koreans for allegedly being part of a long-running conspiracy aimed at extorting funds from US companies and funnelling money to Pyongyang’s weapons programmes and the US State Department announced that it would offer a reward of $5m for anyone providing more information about the alleged scheme.