The cryptocurrency industry has managed to lure in several firms and prominent figures across the globe. Over the past couple of years, the market has seen a plethora of them enter the cryptocurrency scene. While some have done it willingly, a few others were pushed into it without choice. More recently, Metallica, a heavy metal band made headlines in the industry after its X account got hacked
The ill-doers advertised a fake Solana-based meme coin with the METAL ticker via Metallica’s X account. The asset was being pushed as a “dynamic new token.” The account with 6.1 million followers claimed that Ticketmaster worked with them to create the token. But Ticketmaster did not make any announcement as such. Yet, the asset was rolled out on pump.fun, a token deployer built on Solana.
The post on Metallica’s hacked account even said that MoonPay was also part of the token. But the community had a better understanding of things after MoonPay president Keith Grossman affirmed, “MoonPay does NOT support METAL.” The firm even urged the community to stay alert and tweeted,
“If someone is offering you a $METAL token, they are not the master of puppets – they’re the master of scams! Keep your keys safe and ride the lightning responsibly!”
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METAL’s Rise and Fall
The entire charade lasted for 90 minutes, and the post was soon taken down. But the METAL token was thriving. The asset managed to see more than $10 million in trading volume before dipping. The asset’s market value rose to a high of $3.37 million in just 20 minutes after its launch. But it declined to a low of $90,000 within three hours.
Metallica isn’t the only entity targeted in a cryptocurrency-related scam liked this one. Hulk Hogan, professional wrestler, and rapper 50 Cent were also victims of similar hacks over the past month.
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