North Korean hackers create memecoins to launder funds from Binance hack: Elliptic
Summary
Elliptic says North Korean-linked hackers laundered about $430,000 from the $6.4 billion Binance hack through six newly created memecoins on NEAR between Nov. 5 and 7. They swapped stolen NEAR into the tokens and sold them back through decentralized exchange liquidity pools, obscuring wallet-to-wallet movement while leaving transactions traceable onchain. The tokens saw little outside trading and were quickly abandoned. Elliptic linked five token launches through funding flows and said similar tactics were used after the 2025 Bybit hack. About 11.8 million stolen NEAR, then valued at $43.7 million, remained unmoved.
