By
Mayowa Adebajo
June 17th, 2024
Bitcoin developer and Ordinals supporter Udi Wertheimer warned that the incident involving GCR might be part of a broader operation targeting celebrity X accounts.
Over the weekend, a wave of hacks compromised several high-profile X accounts belonging to crypto influencers and celebrities, leading to the promotion of various scam tokens and resulting in brief but notable price surges.
The hackers targeted members of the crypto community like influencer GCR along with celebrities like Caitlyn Jenner. Meme tokens were promoted and a pump-and-dump scheme was orchestrated.
One of the most significant targets was the account of prominent crypto influencer GCR, which was compromised on May 26. The hacker used the account to post promotional content for tokens such as ORDI and Luna2.0.
“Ignore everything coming from my channels,” said GCR via a post from another account. Market observers noted the hacker’s choice of ORDI, a relatively established token with a market cap of $856 million, rather than a microcap coin, which might have yielded more significant gains.
It is important to note that DeFi platform Near Protocol’s X account was also hacked in early May. In April, the official account of Tom Holland, a famous British actor who played Spiderman, was hacked as well.
Bitcoin developer and Ordinals supporter Udi Wertheimer warned that the incident involving GCR might be part of a broader operation targeting celebrity X accounts. Other notable victims included mumble rapper Rich the Kid and media personality Caitlyn Jenner.
“As more niche celebs are popping up by the minute launching meme coins – on a long weekend when platform engineers are away – I recommend that you guys be very careful,” Wertheimer said.
The hackers responsible for these attacks remain behind the shadows and the digital asset sector needs to remain on high alert when it comes to following their beloved celebrities and influencers.
Hackers Gain Control of Celebrity X Accounts
Rich the Kid’s account was used to promote a new token called RICH on the Solana meme coin creation platform pump.fun.
Although the promotional post was swiftly deleted and no official confirmation has been issued by Rich the Kid’s management, the token’s market cap has since stagnated at $76,000, according to dexscreener data.
Similarly, Caitlyn Jenner’s account was compromised to promote a meme coin named $JENNER, which briefly pushed the coin’s market capitalization to $22 million, as per aggregated data from Raydium and GeckoTerminal.
The official X account of gaming giant Activision Blizzard, known for franchises like Call of Duty and Diablo, was also hacked mid-May.
The hacker used the account to promote an unaffiliated meme coin on Solana, falsely presenting it as an official token launch. The deleted post on X featured an image of Crash Bandicoot, a character owned by Activision, and claimed to offer the ATVI token created in collaboration with Solana Labs.
As per dexscreener data, the token has negligible liquidity and it is clear that it has no connection to Activision or its games. Such cases have become quite common in the crypto space.
“Thank you for your patience. We have regained control of the @ATVI_AB account. We take security seriously and we plan to investigate what occurred to avoid situations such as these in the future,” the official Activision Blizzard account tweeted in response.