More than $500 million was lost in Memecoin Rug Pulls and scams in 2024, according to a report by Merkle Science on the Crypto Intelligence Platform.
The most prolific scams included social engineering. This is a technique that relies on impersonation and manipulation to access someone’s personal data. In this case, it’s a famous person or a famous technician.
One of these cases was that the scammer compromised the X account of French footballer Kylian Mbappe. Once they gained access, they posted the link to a malicious memokine that rose to a market capitalization of $460 million before the link drew the boundary.
There was also a case involving Wiz Khalifa, a music artist who targeted 35.7 million followers on X. The fake Wiz Token was promoted and rose to a market capitalization of $3.4 million before it plunged to zero.
“These scams aren’t just opportunistic, they’re highly coordinated operations that leverage trust on a large scale,” Robert Whitaker, law enforcement director at Merkle Science, told Coindesk.
“Hackers are no longer violating wallets and exchanges. They are hijacking the real-time manipulation of the reliability of celebrities and industry leaders. As x is the main battlefield .”
A Merkle Science report reveals that 75% of all attacks occurred on X and 19% on YouTube. 44% of reported social engineering scams resulted in lag pull, while phishing attacks were also attributed to 44% of all scams.
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