After hacking Binance for $6.3 billion late last month, the North Korea-associated hacking group allegedly behind the theft, TraderTraitor, has been using a variety of methods to launder the stolen crypto. In a new report published Monday morning, blockchain analysis firm Elliptic laid out how one of the group’s latest tactics is to create memecoins and move illicit funds through them.

According to the report, the launderers create a new token and pair it with another crypto asset, such as NEAR or a stablecoin, in a liquidity pool on a decentralized exchange. One set of wallets buys the token with stolen funds, and a separate set of wallets, also controlled by the launderers, later sells the token back into the same pool and withdraws the paired crypto asset. Because the liquidity pool sits between the crypto transfers, no funds move directly from the buying wallets to the selling wallets, which end up looking like ordinary traders who sold a token at a profit.

In the report, Elliptic co-founder Tom Robinson explained, “The launderers’ tokens are made to be used once and thrown away. Nobody outside the laundering operation buys them, and their price is whatever the launderers choose to set.”

The clearest example so far has come on the NEAR blockchain, a smart contract platform that markets itself as infrastructure for AI agents . There, the launderers created at least six tokens over three days late last week. The tokens, with names such as FUK, MEILI, and SINU, cost about $90 apiece to create and came dressed in classic memecoin branding, including a monkey wearing a pink bow and an image of Elon Musk under an “Elon 2028 President” banner.

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