A wave of crypto hacks and scams is hitting many of the biggest players in the industry, with the latest victim being Pump.fun. Solana’s biggest memecoin launchpad fell victim to a hack that was used to promote a fraudulent PUMP token.
On Wednesday, February 26, hackers took control of Pump.fun’s official Twitter (X) account. Specifically, they used it to falsely claim that the platform released a new governance token and posted the token’s smart contract address.
The messages quickly drew suspicion, and several analysts and community members warned investors not to buy the token. One was BubbleMaps, a blockchain data aggregation platform, which posted a chart on the PUMP token distribution. Notably, the distribution was heavily concentrated, which indicates a likely rug pull.
While the post was deleted shortly after, it managed to execute a successful rug pull. Specifically, the wallets connected to the hacker made $600,000 after the victims invested, only to dump their liquidity, causing millions in losses for victims.
Pump.fun Scammers Make Billions
While Pump.fun fell victim to its own hack, its platform is a popular resource for rug pulls. This is because the Solana-based memecoin launchpad makes it incredibly easy to launch memecoins. Celebrities, politicians, and influencers are all launching their meme coins on the platform.
Because of how low the barriers to entry are to launch these meme tokens, Pump.fun became the top choice for crypto scammers. For instance, in November, a 13-year-old created their own token, only to make off with $50,000 in liquidity.
Another notable incident is the Libra scandal, which received an endorsement from the President of Argentina, Javier Milei. Despite this high-profile endorsement, Libra crashed 95% after insiders took $99 million from its liquidity pool.
What is worse, crypto rug pulls are becoming more common. According to Merkle Science, in 2024, investors lost $500 million in memecoin rug pulls.
Many of these scams involve hacking high-profile accounts and posting about a fake memecoin. Some of the most famous accounts targeted last year were one by French footballer Kylian Mbappe and musician Wiz Khalifa.
READ MORE: Top Meme Coins to Watch in 2025: Hype or Real Utility?
