Elliptic says about 117,000 NEAR linked to the Binance theft passed through six homemade memecoins, a route intended to disguise the movement of stolen cryptocurrency.

The blockchain analytics firm valued the NEAR at approximately $430,000. It says the operators used decentralized-exchange liquidity pools: one group of wallets bought tokens with stolen NEAR, while another sold them to receive NEAR, avoiding a direct transfer between those wallets.

Elliptic says the added trading steps can slow investigators, but the transactions remain traceable on-chain. The firm also reported the technique on Tron and a related approach on Solana in connection with the theft.

Why it matters

  • Liquidity-pool proceeds may appear to be trading gains; Elliptic cautions against treating them as clean by default.
  • Newly created tokens and linked wallet activity can be relevant indicators for tracing stolen crypto.