🚨 $6.3 BILLION STOLEN… AND MEMECOINS USED TO OBSCURE THE MONEY TRAIL?
According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, actors linked to the October 29 Binance hack created six new tokens on the NEAR Protocol between November 5 and 7.
Their objective? To move approximately 117,000 NEAR, worth around $430,000, through decentralized liquidity pools.
The mechanism is unusual: wallets connected to the stolen funds exchanged crypto for newly created memecoins, while other wallets later sold those tokens to recover real crypto assets.
This made the transactions look more like ordinary trading activity rather than direct transfers between suspicious wallets.
But there is one important detail: blockchain transactions cannot simply disappear. Every swap leaves an on-chain record that investigators can analyze.
Elliptic also observed that almost all trading activity involving these tokens came from wallets linked to the operation.
📊 The key figure: Around $430,000 reportedly passed through these six tokens — only a tiny fraction of the $6.3 billion stolen.
💡 The bigger picture: Memecoins are not just speculative assets. DeFi infrastructure can also be abused to complicate the tracing of illicit funds.
Could blockchain investigators keep up with increasingly creative money-laundering techniques?
#Binance #memecoins #nearprotocol
According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, actors linked to the October 29 Binance hack created six new tokens on the NEAR Protocol between November 5 and 7.
Their objective? To move approximately 117,000 NEAR, worth around $430,000, through decentralized liquidity pools.
The mechanism is unusual: wallets connected to the stolen funds exchanged crypto for newly created memecoins, while other wallets later sold those tokens to recover real crypto assets.
This made the transactions look more like ordinary trading activity rather than direct transfers between suspicious wallets.
But there is one important detail: blockchain transactions cannot simply disappear. Every swap leaves an on-chain record that investigators can analyze.
Elliptic also observed that almost all trading activity involving these tokens came from wallets linked to the operation.
📊 The key figure: Around $430,000 reportedly passed through these six tokens — only a tiny fraction of the $6.3 billion stolen.
💡 The bigger picture: Memecoins are not just speculative assets. DeFi infrastructure can also be abused to complicate the tracing of illicit funds.
Could blockchain investigators keep up with increasingly creative money-laundering techniques?
#Binance #memecoins #nearprotocol