The Twitter account of heavy metal band Metallica was apparently hacked Tuesday night and used to promote a Solana meme coin, continuing a recent trend of celebrities being targeted for sharing pump-and-dump scams that purport to be true.
Although the tweets, which included a Twitter Spaces audio call and replies to other users, were deleted within 90 minutes, the modified METAL token saw a trading volume of more than $10 million before crashing severely.
The apparent scammers claimed that the token was being offered in partnership with ticketing giant Ticketmaster and cryptocurrency payment platform MoonPay, and that holders could use it to get discounts on tickets and merchandise.
The incident occurred less than a week after a similar scam targeted followers of rapper 50 Cent (aka Curtis Jackson), with the legendary professional wrestler Hulk Hogan a goal earlier this month.
Given the frequency of such scams, Crypto Twitter quickly and widely concluded that the tweets were fake. MoonPay President Keith Grossman he intervened early to say that METAL was not supported on the platform.
The scammers responded to Grossman, writing, “We have been in contact with your team via email.” MoonPay then he tweeted a direct warning about the scam and quoted a popular song by the heavy metal giants, saying that anyone offering the METAL token “is not the master of puppets, he is the master of scams.”
The Metallica account then requisitioned blocked the company.
In his brief moment in the spotlight, the METAL token saw more than $10 million in trading volume across 30,000 transactions as its price rose as high as $0.003. It has since collapsed almost completely to below $0.00007. The total market capitalization of the token currently stands at just $65,000.
Not surprisingly, Twitter users jumped at the opportunity to make Metallica jokes. The account for LimeWire, once a file-sharing service that angered Metallica and other bands and musicians before being shut down for facilitating music piracy in 2010, joined in the action.
“Hey Lars, is that you?” LimeWire tweetedreferring to Metallica drummer and co-founder Lars Ulrich, who at the time railed against music-sharing services.
The rebranded LimeWire is now a generative AI platform for musicians and other artists, with its own token $LMWR, after relaunching as a music NFT marketplace.
The scam targeting members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is just the latest in a series of celebrity-themed pump-and-dumps for Solana meme coins. The waters are considerably muddy, however, as several celebrities have launched their own official tokens in recent weeks.
Earlier this week, singer Jason Derulo launched his own token JASON, apparently in collaboration with Sahil Arora, a cryptocurrency promoter who has already been involved in controversial meme coin flips with celebrities like Iggy’s Azalea AND Caitlyn Jenner.
By Andrea Hayward
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