Crypto Scam: Late Tuesday, the Twitter account of heavy metal band Metallica was hijacked. The hackers used it to promote a Solana meme coin, continuing a troubling trend of celebrities’ accounts being exploited for pump-and-dump schemes. The METAL token, touted by the hackers, saw a fleeting surge in trading volume before crashing.
The tweets included a Twitter Spaces audio call and replies to users, suggesting a collaboration with Ticketmaster and crypto payments platform MoonPay. They claimed that the METAL token could be used for discounts on tickets and merchandise. However, these tweets were swiftly deleted within 90 minutes, but not before the token experienced over $10 million in trading volume.
Crypto Twitter quickly recognized the scam. MoonPay’s President, Keith Grossman, stated that METAL was not supported on their platform. The scammers responded, claiming communication with MoonPay via email. MoonPay then issued a direct warning, cleverly referencing Metallica’s famous song, “Master of Puppets,” saying that those offering the METAL token were “the master of scams.”
In the brief window of activity, the METAL token’s price spiked to $0.003 before plummeting to under $0.00007. Its market cap now sits at a mere $65,000.
Crypto Scams On the Rise
This incident follows similar scams, including one targeting rapper 50 Cent just days earlier and another involving legendary wrestler Hulk Hogan earlier this month. The prevalence of these scams has made the crypto community quick to identify fraudulent activities.
Amid the chaos, Twitter users didn’t miss the chance to make jokes. The account for LimeWire, once notorious for facilitating music piracy, joined in. “Hey Lars, is this you?” they tweeted, poking fun at Metallica’s drummer Lars Ulrich, known for his vocal opposition to file-sharing platforms.
Today’s LimeWire operates as a generative AI platform for musicians, complete with its own $LMWR token, a significant pivot from its earlier days.
This scam targeting Metallica is the latest in a series of celebrity-themed pump-and-dump schemes involving Solana meme coins. The landscape is further complicated by legitimate celebrity-endorsed tokens. Recently, singer Jason Derulo launched his JASON token, in collaboration with crypto promoter Sahil Arora, who has been linked to disputed meme coin launches with other celebrities.
In the volatile world of crypto, it seems no one is safe from exploitation, not even the legends of rock and roll.
