WiremarketsBrief
North Korea Is Minting Its Own Meme Coins to Launder Binance Hack Loot
Elliptic says North Korean launderers created six throwaway meme tokens on NEAR between Nov. 5 and 7, moving about $430,000 of stolen Binance funds through homemade liquidity pools.
Brief
Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic reported that North Korean operators have been creating their own worthless meme tokens to move stolen funds tied to the October 29 Binance theft. Between November 5 and 7, the group launched six tokens on the NEAR network, pairing each with NEAR in a liquidity pool, buying them with stolen NEAR and selling them via another group of wallets. Roughly 117,000 NEAR, worth about $430,000, passed through them. The approach keeps funds from moving directly between two wallets, though every step remains visible on-chain. Elliptic said the tokens cost about $90 each to create, and none has traded since November 8. Binance put the theft at $6.34 billion, and the FBI has linked it to TraderTraitor, a North Korean group. Around $2.85 billion of the stolen sum is now frozen.
Why it matters: It shows launderers adapting cheap, disposable tokens to break up fund trails, which makes tracing stolen crypto harder for investigators and exchanges.
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North Korean launderers minted six NEAR meme coins to move stolen funds
Terms in this story
- Liquidity
- How easily an amount can be bought or sold without moving the price much.
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