North Korea drives onchain malware surge, CoinEx shuts: Asia Express

A surge in onchain malware attacks is attributed to North Korea's state-linked hackers, who account for roughly two-thirds of new activity, according to a Chainalysis report. These hackers utilize public blockchains to store malware instructions or infrastructure information, ensuring the durability of their campaigns as the data remains accessible even after domains, servers, or code repositories are taken down.

In 2025, North Korean hackers employed a technique called EtherHiding to insert crypto-stealing code into smart contracts. North Korea is now employing remote workers from third countries, such as Iran and Lebanon, to pass job interviews, which are later taken over by North Korean operatives. South Korean police have referred 18 Polymarket users to prosecutors in an illegal gambling investigation, with users collectively wagering about 17.6 billion won ($12.7 million) on the platform.

Metaplanet, a crypto exchange, has reduced its Series 10 stock pool from 319.464 million to 188.19 million shares and reset the conversion ratio, extinguishing over $220 million in warrant value and increasing Bitcoin per fully diluted share by approximately 8.8%. Hong Kong policymakers are urged to seize the opportunity resulting from the failure of the CLARITY vote in the US, as crypto industry insiders believe the city holds a "critical strategic window."

The South China Morning Post states that crypto industry insiders in Hong Kong advocate for building infrastructure that can operate across regulatory boundaries rather than waiting for a single jurisdiction to define the market. The South Korean Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed new regulations for stablecoins, limiting daily transfers to 5 million baht, equivalent to approximately $151,000.

Thailand's SEC also proposed that users cannot transfer more than 5 million baht per day, valued around $151,000.