American rapper and actor 50 cents has been at the center of the meme coin saga recently Solana Network. The rapper has denied promoting the GUNIT meme coin, claiming that his X account (formerly Twitter) was hacked by people promoting the cryptocurrency.
Hackers target 50 Cent’s account to promote imitation cryptocurrencies
50 cents revealed in an Instagram post that his X account had been hacked, while denying any connection to the GUNIT meme coin that was promoted on his X account. He added that the hacker made $300 million from this elaborate scam. This seems unlikely, however, considering fluidity of memes and market capitalization before it was quickly discovered to be a scam.
Before 50 Cent’s reveal, many were trading the GUNIT meme coin, believing it was owned by the rapper. Rapper X’s account featured several promotional posts about the GUNIT meme coin, which was created via Pump.fun. Crypto token trading volume has reached millions of dollars and reached an all-time high (ATH) market capitalization amount of $6.5 million in less than an hour before it turned out to be a fraud.
50 Cent creating a meme coin and promoting it on his account seemed like a real possibility considering that a lots of other stars they recently created their meme coins and actively promoted them on their account X. This includes Rapper Iggy Azaleawho created the MOTHER meme coin, which currently has a market cap of around $57 million.
The posts posted by the hacker were also well planned and looked convincing, as some made references to the 50 Cent brand of cognac. Others also alluded to recent developments in the Solana meme coin space, including: Martin Shkreli the alleged creation of the DJT meme coin, which likely belonged to former US President Donald Trump.
A modern and disturbing trend
50 Cent isn’t the first celebrity to have his X account hacked to promote a meme coin. Earlier this month, wrestling legend Hulk Hogan suffered a similar fate taken over he did not post promotional posts from his X account, which promoted the HULK meme coin.
Scammers are taking advantage of the celebrity meme coin trend to create meme coins and give the false impression that a specific celebrity created them. Although Donald Trump’s account was not hacked, something similar happened to DJT in the same corner. He relied on unconfirmed reports asset created it and ultimately abandoned it when it was confirmed that he had no ties to the former US president.
In general, some, incl Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterincriticized the celebrity meme coin craze, noting that they lack innovation and only serve to extract money.
Featured image from SecurityMadeSimple, chart from TradingView
