The hacker took over McDonald’s Instagram and promoted a memecoin themed after the fast-food chain’s marketing mascot, Grimace.
A hacker took over McDonald’s Instagram account on Wednesday and promoted a sham memecoin, Grimace. Multiple pictures seen on X showed the fast-food chain posting a series of updates shilling the Solana-based memecoin.
The token, GRIMACE, was named after McDonald’s famous purple mascot, which the fast-food company uses in advertisements. According to the now-deleted posts, the scammer promoted Grimace as McDonald’s experience on Solana, drawing users’ attention to the sham token.
On-chain data shows that the memecoin’s market cap spiked to $25 million less than 30 minutes after the hacker promoted Grimace to McDonald’s 5.1 million followers. This was due to the surge in the token’s price, which reached as high as $0.025.
The exploiter then dumped his share of GRIMACE on buyers flocking to buy. Data from Bubblemaps reveals that the hacker owned 75% of the token’s supply, split into 100 different wallets.
The rug pull scam is not new in the crypto space. Earlier this year, The Crypto Basic reported a case where scammers realized $1.7 million, rugpulling multiple memecoins on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC).
Hacker Makes Off with $700k
After the rug pull, the hacker updated McDonald’s Instagram bio to reflect his recent exploit. The exploiter admitted he had scammed users with the Grimace token and had realized $700,000.
The hacker’s bio update showed he claimed to be India_X_Kr3w. He also added an Indian flag at the end of the post and thanked users before removing it, as did every other post about the sham memecoin.
McDonald’s acknowledged the Instagram hack in a statement and assured users it had handled the situation. The fast-food giant apologized to its community for the situation and any foul language the hacker used while in control of the account. The account of the marketing director at McDonald’s, Guillaume Huin, was also affected by the hacker.
At press time, GRIMACE had only a market cap of $77,000 and was trading at $0.0003155.
Disclaimer: This content is informational and should not be considered financial advice. The views expressed in this article may include the author's personal opinions and do not reflect The Crypto Basic’s opinion. Readers are encouraged to do thorough research before making any investment decisions. The Crypto Basic is not responsible for any financial losses.
