North Korea Turns DIY Meme Coins Into a Laundering Pipe for Stolen Binance Crypto, Elliptic Says

Brief

By Dextape Desk · November 9, 2026

Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic reported on Monday that people working on behalf of North Korea are launching short-lived meme coins to move money stolen from Binance. Between November 5 and 7, about 117,000 NEAR, worth roughly $430,000, passed through six such tokens. Each token was paired with NEAR inside its own liquidity pool on a decentralized exchange. One set of wallets deposited stolen NEAR to acquire the new token, and another set sold it back and withdrew NEAR, so no direct transfer linked the two groups. The tokens had cartoon artwork, drew almost no outside trading, and were chained together, with profits from one token funding the creator of the next. None has traded since November 8. The FBI linked the October 29 Binance theft of about $6.3 billion to North Korea's TraderTraitor group.

Why it matters: It shows launderers using short-lived token pools on decentralized exchanges to put distance between stolen funds and new wallets, a method compliance teams are now warned to scrutinize.

Mentioned: Binance

Summary by Dextape, based on reporting by Unchained. Machine-written from Unchained’s report and checked against it · How Dextape writes