North Korea Creates Meme Coins To Launder Binance Hack Funds

North Korean launderers are creating their own meme coins to launder stolen Binance funds, according to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic. The launderers have created at least six new tokens on the NEAR blockchain and used them to move around $430,000 in stolen funds. The tokens were created between November 5 and 7, and were used to buy and sell stolen NEAR. The technique used by the launderers involves creating a token, opening a liquidity pool, buying the token with stolen funds, and then selling it back into the pool from a second set of wallets. This approach was first reported by Elliptic in the laundering of the February 2025 Bybit theft, also attributed to North Korean group TraderTraitor.