While overall funding in Web3 was down last year from 2021, several top investors in the space such as Shima Capital, Animoca Brands and Y Combinator saw their numbers tick up in 2022, according to Crunchbase data.

As the industry reels from the shock of Euler Finance’s $197 million hack, new on-chain data reveals a transaction to a red-flagged North Korean address that threatens to open a can of worms.

A former Tornado Cash developer claims to be building a new crypto mixing service that aims to solve a “critical flaw” of the sanctioned crypto mixer — which he hopes will convince U.S. regulators to reconsider its position on privacy mixers. The code of a new Ethereum-based mixer, “Privacy Pools,” was launched on GitHub on Mar. 5 by its creator, Ameen Soleimani. In a 22-part Twitter thread, Soleimani explained that the “critical flaw” with Tornado Cash is that users cannot prove that they’re not associated with North Korea’s Lazarus Group or any criminal enterprise for that matter. (Cointelegraph)

North Korean hackers stole $234.33 million from Gate.io in 2018. Earlier this week, the hackers moved 1944.72 Ethereum (ETH) of the stolen funds, worth around $3.2 million at current prices, on-chain sleuth ZachXBT pointed out. The funds had been lying dormant for over 4.5 years, he noted.

A British national wanted with a red notice from Interpol for consulting North Korea on cryptocurrencies has been detained in Moscow. U.S. authorities allege that the man helped the regime in Pyongyang to bypass sanctions using digital assets.

British national Christopher Douglas Emms — wanted by the FBI for allegedly helping the North Korean government evade U.S. sanctions via crypto — was arrested in Moscow by the Russian bureau of Interpol on Feb. 21, according to local media reports.

According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, crypto exchanges Binance and Huobi have frozen cryptocurrencies worth approximately $1.4 million linked to North Korea. The firm noted that the stolen funds, which were dormant until recently, originated from the June 2022 hack of Harmony’s Horizon Bridge. “The Horizon cross-chain bridge was&nbsp;<a href="https://news.bitcoin.com/harmonys-100m-hack-was-due-to-a-compromised-multi-sig-scheme-says-analyst/">attacked</a>&nbsp;on June 24th 2022, resulting in the loss of $99.6 million in cryptoassets. These funds were then laundered through the now-sanctioned Tornado Cash,” the blockchain analytics firm detailed. Ethereum mixer Tornado Cash was&nbsp;<a href="https://news.bitcoin.com/us-government-bans-ethereum-mixer-tornado-cash-platform-added-to-ofacs-sdn-list/">banned</a>&nbsp;last August by the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC). (Bitcoin.com)

South Korea announced its first independent sanctions related to cryptocurrency thefts and cyber attacks against certain North Korean groups and individuals.

The United Nations (UN) said in a confidential report that North Korea stole $630 million of crypto last year, according to a Feb. 6 Reuters report.

North Korean hackers are trying to break into crypto accounts by sending bogus job offers, a security provider has claimed.