Hackers linked to North Korea are minting throwaway memecoins to hide stolen crypto from the October 29 Binance hack, according to blockchain firm Elliptic.

The FBI blamed the $6.3 billion theft - the largest in crypto history - on TraderTraitor, North Korea's state-sponsored group. North Korea denies it.

But here is the nuance the headline misses: only about *$430,000* went through the memecoins, not $6.3 billion.

Elliptic found at least six tokens created Nov 5-7 on the NEAR blockchain: FUK, OLCCL, MEILI, MMLI, DABI and SINU. Each cost about $90 to launch. One used an image of Elon Musk under an "Elon 2028 President" banner. Others used a monkey, duck, chimp, fox and badge. Elliptic stresses there is *no indication Musk was involved* or endorsed them. d862

How it works: one set of wallets buys the new memecoin with stolen NEAR, another set sells it back into the same liquidity pool and collects NEAR in a different wallet. No direct transfer between the two. On paper, the receiving wallet looks like a lucky trader, not a thief. d862

About 117,000 NEAR passed through them, then trading stopped Nov 8. The trick is cheap, disposable, and repeatable. Elliptic already saw the same method used to launder $24M from the Bybit hack.

About $3.13B is still in attacker-controlled wallets, mostly in Bitcoin and Ether. The memecoins are just one small, clever layer to slow investigators down.

This is not about Musk. It is about how easy laundering has become - $90 to create a fake coin, $430,000 to test a system that could scale.