On November 9, 2026, blockchain research firm Elliptic revealed that North Korean cybercriminals created six new tokens on the NEAR network. According to reporting by staff writer Nate Kostar and editor Ana Paula Pereira, the assets were created to process proceeds originating from a Binance exploit.
The actors routed the stolen capital through decentralized liquidity pools connected to the newly issued memecoins. This method enabled the group to obfuscate wallet-to-wallet transfers and mask the lineage of the stolen funds across the NEAR protocol.
Broader crypto assets showed mixed movement following the news, with Bitcoin down 0.25% at $75,118.76 and Ethereum falling 1.12% to $2,127.51. Binance Coin dropped 2.21% to $690.55, Cardano declined 5.19% to $0.1768, while Zcash traded up 1.75% at $1,161.65.
For traders holding perpetual futures positions on platforms such as Bitget, Bybit, MEXC, or OKX, these laundering tactics alter nothing directly regarding funding rates or holding fees. Market liquidity and borrowing costs for major derivative contracts remain unaffected unless exchanges actively restrict affected pairs.
Source: cointelegraph — North Korean hackers create memecoins to launder funds from Binance hack: Elliptic