Heavy metal band Metallica's Twitter account was hacked late Tuesday and used to promote Solana's meme coin, which aims to share the latest celebrity pump-and-dump scams claiming to be the real deal.
Although the tweets containing the Twitter space audio call and directed at other users were deleted within 90 minutes, the minted METAL token saw more than $10 million in trading volume before the crash.
The apparent scammers said the token was offered in partnership with Ticketmaster giant and crypto payment platform MoonPay, and holders could use it for discounts on tickets and merchandise.
The incident follows a similar scam earlier this month aimed at followers of rapper 50 Cent (aka Curtis Jackson) by legendary wrestler Hulk Hogan.
Given the frequency of such scams, Crypto Twitter tweets have quickly and widely concluded. Keith Grossman, president of MoonPay, previously chimed in saying that METAL is not supported on the platform.
The scammers responded to Grossman, “We have been in contact with your team via email. Moonpai then tweeted a direct warning about the scam, quoting a popular song from the heavy metal giants, saying that anyone offering METAL tokens is “not a puppet master, but a scam master.”
The mandated Metallica label suspended the company.
During its brief time on the spotlight, the METAL token saw its price rise as high as $0.003 and over $10 million in trading volume over 30,000 transactions. Since then, it has fallen almost entirely below $0.00007. The total market value of the token currently stands at $65,000.
Unsurprisingly, Twitter users took the opportunity to make Metallica jokes. In the year LimeWire, a file-sharing service that angered Metallica and other bands and musicians before it was shut down for music piracy in 2010, is now in action.
“Hey Lars, is that you?” LimeWire tweeted that Metallica drummer and co-founder Lars Ulrich had insulted the music-sharing service.
The renewed LimeWire brand today is an AI platform for musicians and other artists—which has its own $LMWR token—after launching as a music NFT marketplace.
Targeted at rock and roll celebrity inductees, the scam is a celebrity-themed pump-and-dump for Solana meme coins only. However, the waters have become significantly muddied in recent weeks as several celebrities have launched their own public signs.
Earlier this week, singer Jason Derulo appeared to launch his own JASON token alongside Sahil Arora, a crypto promoter caught up in a controversial meme coin startup alongside celebrities like Iggy Azalea and Caitlyn Jenner.
Edited by Andrew Hayward.
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