North Korea’s six-month infiltration campaign at Drift rattled a crypto industry already reeling from billion-dollar exploits.

But as the news settled, a bigger question came into focus: why does North Korea keep coming back to crypto in the first place, and why does its approach look so different from every other state-backed hacking operation on the planet?

The short answer, according to security experts, is that crypto helps give the regime a revenue stream and keep them afloat.

“North Korea doesn’t have the luxury of patience,” said Dave Schwed, chief operating officer at SVRN and the founder of the cybersecurity masters program at Yeshiva University. “They’re under comprehensive international sanctions and they need hard currency to…