The X account of American actress Sydney Sweeney was hacked, leading to posts that promoted a new cryptocurrency token named after her.
As almost always, this incident appears to be part of a pump-and-dump scheme.
In da club
The hacker, who claims responsibility for similar hacks on 50 Cent and Hulk Hogan, used Sweeney’s account to promote a Solana-based token, not surprisingly called SWEENEY.
Within two hours of its launch on July 2, the token saw trading volumes exceed $10 million, driven by these promotional posts from Sweeney’s compromised account.
One of these fake posts, which has since been deleted, suggested an imminent rise in the token’s market cap, creating fake urgency to make users buy.
Then, as it always happen with the pump-and-dump scams, the price of SWEENEY dropped nearly 90% just over an hour after the initial promotion.
Despite this decline, the token has partially recovered. In the time of writing, its market cap stands at $1.2 million, down from a peak of $3.85 million, according to DEX Screener data.
Okay, lot of people likes Ms. Sweeney, but still. It was a pump-and-dump, move on.
The weak links
After the incident, the administrator of a Telegram channel linked to the token, which was also shared on Sweeney’s X account, claimed responsibility for the hack.
But this isn’t the first time Sweeney’s X account has been hacked for crypto promotion.
In January, her account was breached to promote another Solana token called MILK, which now has a $1 million market cap.
This new hack follows a trend where several celebrities have been involved in promoting various crypto tokens.
People likes celebs
Celebrities like the rapper Iggy Azalea have also backed Solana-based memecoins, often collaborating with memecoin creator Sahil Arora.
Other celebrities, including American rapper Rich the Kid, Nigerian singer David Adedeji Adeleke Oon, and boxing legend Floyd Mayweather, have had their X accounts used to promote token launches.
Among these, Azalea’s MOTHER token performed the best, reaching a market cap of $148.9 million at its peak, though it has since lost nearly $100 million in price, as per CoinGecko data.
