McDonald’s Instagram hacked to promote Solana-based scam meme currency ‘Gimace’

McDonald’s Instagram page was hacked on August 21st, leading to a major scam involving a meme coin based on Solana.

The perpetrators exploited the fast food chain’s social media account to promote a fraudulent token called “Grimace,” a reference to one of the fictional McDonald’s characters that appear in its ads.

Bubblemaps findings reveal that the hacker acquired 75% of the total Grimace token supply using the Solana meme coin deployer pump.fun. The attacker leveraged multiple addresses to purchase the token simultaneously and then distributed the accumulated supply across approximately 100 different wallets.

The hackers diverted more than $700,000 to Solana during the scheme. X’s screenshots revealed that the McDonald’s Instagram page was modified to endorse the testimonial as a “McDonald’s experiment in Solana” and included a message thanking followers for their contributions, hinting at the ‘execution of the scam.

In a statement to the New York Post, McDonald’s said it was aware of an “isolated incident” affecting its social media accounts.

“We have resolved the issue on these accounts and apologize to our fans for any offensive language posted during this time.”

This event serves as a reminder to investors to be cautious with newly launched meme coins, as many of these highly volatile assets are susceptible to scams. For the Solana ecosystem, pump.fun has become a prominent place for creating meme coins.

Introduced on January 14, 2024, pump.fun saw its popularity rise in March, coinciding with the peak of meme coin season.

K33’s report reveals that the platform is approaching $100 million in total revenue. Since the beginning of the year, pump.fun users have released 1,829,747 meme coins, a number that many feel reflects the lack of seriousness in the Solana DeFi space.

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