- Hackers hijacked Wiz Khalifa’s X account to promote the $WIZ memecoin
- Celebrity-themed memecoins often lead to scams as hackers exploit high-profile accounts
In a surprising twist, rapper Wiz Khalifa’s X account became the target of hackers promoting a memecoin called $WIZ through pump.fun. According to blockchain investigator ZachXBT, the hackers may be the same ones who previously took control of Truth Terminal founder’s X account.
Wiz Khalifa’s account hacked
During the brief period before the post was deleted, Khalifa’s hijacked account promoted the $WIZ token, creating significant buzz among followers.
The hackers noted,
“The rapper is working with my team to drop $WIZ for all the crypto fans.”
This led to a brief surge in WIZ memecoin’s value, with the same peaking at a valuation of $3.4 million within its first 15 minutes.
However, this high didn’t last. Within the following hour, the token’s market cap plummeted to under $28,000 as early investors rapidly sold off their holdings. At the time of writing, WIZ was trading at around $8,400, marking a steep 93.67% decline in the last 24 hours, according to DEX Screener.
This rapid rise and fall highlighted a classic pump-and-dump pattern common with scam tokens.
ZachXBT issues a word of caution
As expected, blockchain investigator ZachXBT alerted the community via a Telegram channel, sharing a screenshot of a deleted post from Khalifa’s X account.
Source: ZachXBT
ZachXBT warned traders about the pump.fun memecoin WIZ, suspecting that a scammer compromised Khalifa’s account to promote fraudulent tokens.
He said,
“Do not buy the Wiz Khalifa pump fun [token] it’s the same hacker who compromised Andy Ayrey (Truth Terminal creator) the other day.”
While the hacker’s identity remains unknown, blockchain investigator ZachXBT believes the same individual breached Andy Ayrey’s account. ZachXBT believes that the recent hacking of Wiz Khalifa’s X account is connected to the same attacker who hijacked Ayrey’s account on 29 October.
In that incident, scammers used Ayrey’s account to promote a questionable memecoin called Infinite Backrooms (IB). This coin drew inspiration from the AI chat experiment that led to the creation of the Truth Terminal project.
By promising airdrops to users who promoted the associated Telegram group, the scammers defrauded over $600,000 from unsuspecting followers.
Other similar incidents
Needless to say, the rise of celebrity-themed memecoins, like Iggy Azalea’s MOTHER, has inspired imitators eager to profit from famous names.
However, this trend has also fueled scams, with hackers exploiting high-profile accounts to promote fraudulent tokens.
For example, recently, hackers seized Kylian Mbappé’s X account to promote the MBAPPE token. This resulted in one investor losing over $1 million as the coin’s value plummeted within an hour. Similar incidents have targeted celebrities like Jason Derulo and Metallica.
