North Korean hackers used six meme coins to launder $430,000 in stolen NEAR, Elliptic says

The tokens were minted over three days to disguise stolen funds from the $6.4 billion Binance hack as routine meme coin trading North Korea-linked hackers have found a new use for meme coins: hiding stolen money in plain sight. Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic said on November 9 that actors tied to the regime created six meme tokens on the NEAR blockchain. They used them to launder about $430,000 in stolen NEAR, part of the proceeds from the $6.4 billion Binance hack on October 29. Six tokens, three days, one purpose According to Elliptic, the tokens were minted between November 5 and November 7. They carry the tickers FUK, OLCCL, MEILI, MMLI, DABI and SINU. Each token was tied to NEAR through specific liquidity pools on decentralized exchanges. A liquidity pool works like an automated currency booth: users deposit pairs of tokens, and anyone can trade one for the other at a price set by an algorithm instead of an order book. Roughly 117,000 stolen NEAR, worth about $430,000, moved through these six tokens. Elliptic said the goal was to break the visible on-chain connection between the wallets where the funds came from and the wallets where they ended up. Blockchains are public l...