On the morning of August 29th (UTC), the crypto community on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter) discovered a concerning cybersecurity incident. The account of football superstar Kylian Mbappe, boasting 14.4 million followers, was hacked and exploited to promote a new memecoin called MBAPPE on the Solana platform.
In a short period after its launch, the MBAPPE token reached an impressive market cap of $460 million. However, this success was short-lived as the hacker quickly withdrew all liquidity from the token’s swap pool, pocketing $90,000 and causing the coin’s value to plummet below $500,000.
The attacker didn’t stop there. They went on to create multiple other memecoins also named $MBAPPE and promoted them on the compromised X account. Additionally, the hacker posted controversial messages, including mocking Messi and making comparisons between the two Manchester clubs.
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The fallout from this incident has been significant. Many investors suffered heavy losses, with one notable case where a $1 million investment dwindled to just $9,000 after purchasing the MBAPPE memecoin. On the other hand, some lucky investors managed to make a profit of up to $215,000 in just 8 seconds of trading.
This incident is not an isolated case. Recently, there has been a rise in the hacking of celebrities’ social media accounts to promote memecoins. Another example is the hacking of the Instagram account of the fast-food chain McDonald’s.
Moreover, there are also instances where football players themselves have actively promoted memecoins, such as Messi and Ronaldinho with the WATER token on Solana. However, these cases do not involve hacked accounts.
