Elliptic: North Korean Hackers Ran $430K Through Homemade Tokens

The hackers who stole about $6.4 billion from Binance are laundering part of the loot through homemade tokens. According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, about 117,000 NEAR (roughly $430,000) has passed through six such tokens on the NEAR network. The amount is small next to the theft, but it shows how the attackers hunt for ways to move funds.

Details

Elliptic describes worthless tokens paired with liquidity pools: funds flow through the pools rather than by direct transfer, which muddies the trail. Forklog reports that the tokens were created on Nov. 5⁠–⁠7 and trading stopped on Nov. 8; Elliptic's page does not state those dates.

Elliptic's status as of Nov. 9: $2.85 billion frozen or seized, about $3.0 billion still on theft-linked addresses, $225 million moved to new bitcoin addresses, and negligible amounts cashed out. By Nov. 9 roughly 7,000 ETH (about $15 million) had entered Tornado Cash. TRM Labs earlier described a similar trick on Tron, where a token only its creator could mint was launched on Oct. 31.

What this means for the market

Most of the stolen funds have not been cashed out, so potential selling pressure remains a risk, though no large-scale sales are confirmed. The FBI earlier attributed the theft to the TraderTraitor group; we track the case in our hack chronicle. For the live bitcoin price, see the daily brief.