Over the weekend, several crypto-related accounts were hacked on X [formerly Twitter]. American celebrity Caitlyn Jenner’s was the one that managed to grab most eyeballs. Via a post on X, Jenner revealed that she had launched a token with the ticker JENNER via Solana’s meme coin generating platform Pump.fun. Eyebrows were raised, questions were asked, and assumptions were made. So, did the celebrity indeed launch a token?
The post was accompanied with a picture of Jenner and former US President Donald Trump with the caption, “make america great again!!! and we love crypto!” In another subsequent post, she posted the price fluctuation trend of several crypto assets and questioned,
“What a beautiful day for crypto! Am I still the crypto queen today with the insane performance since the launch of Jenner 20 hours ago?!”
To affirm her authenticity, she also posted a video talking about the token. The post specifically underlined that it wasn’t “deep fake,” and revealed that the token had amassed more than $113 million in trading volume within a span of just four hours. “This is real, get involved. My new crypto coin,” she exclaimed in the video.
Initially, community members did not pay much heed and dismissed it by calling it a hack. The price of the token, however, kept pumping and attained a peak of $0.04355. Right after that, the reverse trajectory started, with the price dropping by 70% to 0.01265 at press time.
Investigations later revealed that no hack took place, per se. Instead, her account fell victim to social engineering by developer Sahil Arora. He presented himself as a crypto expert to help launch Jenner's token. He took advantage of the team's lack of crypto knowledge. After the token launch, he initiated a sell-off. A host of burner wallets and the deployer wallet were emptied. The celebrity’s manager didn’t realize it was a scam and was under the impression that Arora had the funds with him. The developer has carried out a handful of similar celebrity rug pulls of late, with all attacks allegedly leading back to his main wallet.
Leaving aside Jenner, crypto trader GCR and American rapper ‘Rich The Kid’ fell victim to hacks over the past few hours.
