North Korean hackers are creating memecoins to wash loot from $6.3 billion Binance hack

North Korean hackers linked to the $6.3 billion Binance hack laundered roughly 117,000 NEAR, valued at about $430,000, by routing funds through six memecoins they created themselves, according to Elliptic. The tokens were deployed on the NEAR Protocol blockchain, with the hackers swapping stolen assets into their own memecoins to obscure the transaction trail. The tactic matters because memecoins typically attract less scrutiny than major assets, giving launderers a low-profile channel for moving illicit funds. Elliptic's findings add to the roughly $6.3 billion already tied to the 2022 Binance bridge exploit, one of crypto's largest thefts. Watch for whether other hacking groups adopt homemade token laundering and whether exchanges tighten monitoring of low-liquidity memecoin flows.