North Korean #Pirates computer hackers are launching #memecoins to launder money from the $6.3 billion Binance hack.
Analytics firm #blockchain Elliptic identified six of these memecoins, created between November 5 and 7, each costing around $90.
The scheme is simple. Hackers create a liquidity pool on a DeFi exchange, pairing the memecoin with a real cryptocurrency such as $NEAR .
A hacker's wallet buys the memecoin with stolen NEAR, while another sells it back into the same pool for NEAR.
This makes the receiving wallet appear to have made money through normal trading. They have already moved $430,000 this way on NEAR, and the same trick has been spotted on Tron and Solana.
This makes stolen cryptocurrency harder to trace.
Stolen #USDT and USDC can be frozen by their issuers, but $BTC , $ETH , and NEAR are not centrally controlled and can be transferred.
The hackers used this exact process during the 2025 Bybit breach, the largest cryptocurrency theft before the #Binance theft.
Analytics firm #blockchain Elliptic identified six of these memecoins, created between November 5 and 7, each costing around $90.
The scheme is simple. Hackers create a liquidity pool on a DeFi exchange, pairing the memecoin with a real cryptocurrency such as $NEAR .
A hacker's wallet buys the memecoin with stolen NEAR, while another sells it back into the same pool for NEAR.
This makes the receiving wallet appear to have made money through normal trading. They have already moved $430,000 this way on NEAR, and the same trick has been spotted on Tron and Solana.
This makes stolen cryptocurrency harder to trace.
Stolen #USDT and USDC can be frozen by their issuers, but $BTC , $ETH , and NEAR are not centrally controlled and can be transferred.
The hackers used this exact process during the 2025 Bybit breach, the largest cryptocurrency theft before the #Binance theft.
