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North Korean hackers use homemade meme coins to launder Binance funds

Elliptic traced about $430,000 of funds stolen from Binance through six homemade meme tokens launched by North Korean launderers. The theft totals about $6.3 billion, so the amount traced is a small share.

Illustration: A small cluster of cartoonish, hand-made toy tokens drifting like paper boats down a dark river, while a shadowy hooded figure far off on the bank watches them float away from a heavy broken vault.
Illustration

Elliptic traced about 117,000 NEAR, worth roughly $430,000, through six tokens that the launderers created. The tokens appeared between Nov. 5 and 7 and were used to move part of the funds stolen from Binance.

Laundering means hiding the trail of stolen money. The launderers used liquidity pools, which are pools of coins that let people trade one token for another. Some of the tokens were themed around Elon Musk and animals.

Illustration: Seen from above, a shallow round pool of water on a workbench with a handful of mismatched coins, some stamped with simple animal shapes, sliding in from one side while a bright pastel ripple spreads across the surface.
Illustration

The total stolen was about $6.3 billion, so the traced amount is a small slice of the theft. Other figures put the loss as high as $6.4 billion.

In numbers

6Meme tokens launched

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