Binance Hack Launderers Mint Elon Musk and Animal Meme Coins to Move Stolen Crypto
Elliptic says the hackers are minting their own worthless tokens—complete with cartoon animal and Elon Musk logos—and routing stolen funds through liquidity pools to break the trail.
Hackers likely working on behalf of North Korea are using meme coins to launder $6.3 billion in cryptocurrency stolen from Binance. The heist, which Futurism reports is the largest in crypto history, occurred after months of planning and saw the thieves abscond with the funds in just 20 minutes.
According to Elliptic, the launderers are minting worthless, single-use tokens featuring Elon Musk and cartoon animal logos to move the stolen assets. These coins are used as "containers" within liquidity pools to disguise the movement of funds. Elliptic notes that this method is cost-effective because meme coins are cheap to create and allow creators to set prices for tokens that nobody else intends to buy.
Brief written by urgent.news from Decrypt, Futurism — 2 reports on this story. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
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