North Korean hackers accused of carrying out the biggest cryptocurrency theft in history are now creating novelty ‘memecoins’ in order to launder the stolen money, according to investigators.
The $6.3 billion cyber attack on the crypto exchange Binance last month saw the North Korea-linked hacking group TraderTraitor steal bitcoin, ethereum and several other digital assets.
In order to move the stolen money, TraderTraitor is reportedly minting obscure memecoins – cryptocurrencies typically built around internet memes, animals or celebrities – to better obscure the source of the funds.
Blockchain analytics firm Elliptic observed launderers creating memecoins in various styles, including a monkey wearing a pink bow, a duck in front of a US flag, and an image of Elon Musk under an ‘Elon 2028 President’ banner.
“The amounts involved are small so far, with about $430,000 of stolen funds passing through home-made meme tokens, but the technique is cheap to run and could carry far larger sums,” Tom Robinson, chief scientist and co-founder of Elliptic, wrote in a report on Monday.
“The trail can still be followed... The technique slows investigators down rather than hiding the funds, and each token is cheap enough to throw away.”
The FBI said that it had observed members of TraderTraitor converting stolen assets into Ethereum (ETH) in order to disguise the origin of the funds.
“It is expected these assets will then be further laundered by converting them using DeFi [decentralised finance] and instant swap services as they prepare them for further laundering stages,” the US law enforcement agency said.
Tracing cryptocurrency movements can be done through their online ledger, known as a blockchain, however recovering them is notoriously difficult due to their decentralised design.
Cyber criminals exploit the borderless and pseudo-anonymous nature of blockchain technology to disguise the audit trail, routing the funds through a complex web of digital intermediaries to obscure their origin.
Forensic investigators warned that stopping such thefts in the future would require industry-wide coordination and a rapid response to freeze funds before criminals have a chance to launder them.
"The $6.3 billion Binance hack should be a wake-up call for the entire cryptocurrency industry,” Jonathan Benton, a former senior UK law enforcement leader and now chief executive of crypto tracing firm iSanctuary, told The Independent.
“This isn't just another cyber attack. It's a warning about the scale and sophistication of organised crime targeting digital assets... The technology exists to trace stolen funds; however, the challenge is turning that intelligence into rapid, coordinated action before those assets disappear. It needs to be part of the infrastructure.”
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