North Korean Hackers Create Memecoins to Launder Proceeds of $6.3 Billion Binance Hack

The North Korean hackers are developing their own memecoins to launder money from the $6.3 billion (roughly Rs. 59,018 crore) Binance hack by generating false trade volumes to legitimise their gains. According to an analysis by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, the hackers transferred 117,000 NEAR tokens, valued at approximately $430,000 (roughly Rs. 4 crore), through six memecoins that were created between November 5 and November 7. This includes one token showing a picture of Elon Musk under an “Elon 2028 President” banner. Still, according to Elliptic, there is no indication that Musk has any link to the tokens.

FBI Attributes the Binance Exploit to North Korea's TraderTraitor Hacking Group

According to Elliptic, each memecoin was paired with NEAR in its own liquidity pool on the decentralised exchange, and the same set of wallets was used to buy memecoins using stolen NEAR coins and another set to sell those very memecoins for NEAR, ensuring that the stolen NEAR coins do not get transferred from one wallet to another. As a result, the money appears as trading earnings.

Elliptic co-founder and chief scientist Tom Robinson told CoinDesk, “The launderers made six of these crypto tokens, and traded them only with themselves. That makes the stolen funds look like trading proceeds.” Elliptic observed that nearly all transactions came from wallets connected with the launderers, while outsiders comprised less than 1 percent of trades of one coin. Transactions of all six coins were halted as of November 8.

According to the FBI, the TraderTraitor group from North Korea is behind the Binance theft on October 29. The hackers have also utilised the THORChain platform to transform the stolen coins into Bitcoin, whose transactions cannot be halted by any centralised authority. 

According to Elliptic, the same laundering method was employed after the Bybit hack of $1.5 billion (roughly Rs. 14,052 crore) in 2025, where the North Korean-affiliated hackers laundered at least $24 million (roughly Rs. 225 crore) using a new token on the TRON blockchain. According to the report, about 11.8 million NEAR stolen in the Binance hack had not been moved. Elliptic estimated the value of these funds at $43.7 million (roughly Rs. 409 crore).