The X account of American actress Sydney Sweeney was hacked with now-deleted posts promoting a crypto token bearing her name in an apparent pump-and-dump scheme.
The Solana-based token SWEENEY amassed over $10 million in trading volume within two hours of its launch on July 2, bolstered by several promotional posts made from Sweeney’s X account.
“Well I think it’s time… $sweeney is now live 100mc incoming,” said one of Sweeney’s now-deleted X posts shared online, which Cointelegraph could not independently verify.
SWEENEY’s price dropped nearly 90% in a little over an hour starting at 6:15 pm UTC, though it has partially rebounded since then. Its market cap currently sits at $1.2 million, down from its peak of $3.85 million, DEX Screener data shows.
The administrator of a Telegram channel linked to the token, which was shared on Sweeney’s X account, seemingly took credit for the hack.
In now-deleted posts, they claimed they were also behind recent X account hacks on rapper 50 Cent and ex-pro wrestler Hulk Hogan used to promote similarly faked tokens. They added they would soon target a celebrity even more “popular” than Sweeney but did not give specific details.
It’s the second time Sweeney’s X account has been hacked to promote a crypto token. In January, her account was breached, with hackers promoting the Solana token MILK, which currently has a $1 million market cap.
The hack comes after several minor celebrities have turned to promoting crypto tokens.
Media personality Caitlyn Jenner and rapper Iggy Azalea both launched and backed Solana-based memecoins, which they say initially involved memecoin collaborator Sahil Arora.
American rapper “Rich the Kid,” Nigerian singer David Adedeji Adeleke Oon and boxing legend Floyd Mayweather were among the other celebrities that had token launches promoted from their X accounts.
Azalea’s MOTHER token was the best-performing celeb token of the lot, reaching a market cap of $148.9 million at its peak.
However, nearly $100 million has been shaved from its market cap since, CoinGecko data shows.