𝗞𝘆𝗹𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗠𝗯𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲'𝙨 𝙓 𝘼𝙘𝙘𝙤𝙪𝙣𝙩 𝙃𝙖𝙘𝙠𝙚𝙙 𝙩𝙤 𝙋𝙧𝙤𝙢𝙤𝙩𝙚 𝙈𝙚𝙢𝙚𝙘𝙤𝙞𝙣. Football star Kylian Mbappe's X account, who plays for Real Madrid and the French national team, was hacked and used to promote memecoins, generating hundreds of thousands of dollars.
On August 29th (UTC), the crypto community on X (formerly Twitter) was alerted to a cybersecurity breach. Mbappe's account, with 14.4 million followers, was compromised to advertise a new memecoin named MBAPPE on the Solana platform.
Shortly after its launch, the MBAPPE token's market cap soared to $460 million. However, this was short-lived, as the hacker quickly drained all liquidity from the token’s swap pool, taking $90,000 and causing the token's value to drop below $500,000. The hacker then created several other memecoins also called $MBAPPE, using the compromised account to promote them. They also posted provocative messages mocking Messi and comparing the two Manchester clubs.
The breach led to significant financial losses for many investors. In one case, a $1 million investment in the MBAPPE memecoin dwindled to just $9,000. Conversely, some lucky investors managed to gain up to $215,000 within seconds of trading.
This incident is part of a growing trend where celebrities' social media accounts are hacked to promote memecoins. For instance, the Instagram account of McDonald's was also hacked for similar purposes. There have also been instances where football players, like Messi and Ronaldinho, have promoted memecoins like the WATER token on Solana, but these cases did not involve hacked accounts.