Cryptocurrency hackers claimed they broke into McDonald’s official Instagram account and used it to promote a fake digital currency — making off with $700,000 in stolen money.
A screenshot circulating online shows the McDonald’s Instagram page showing its caption changed to: “Sorry mah n–ga you have just been rug pulled by India_X_Kr3w thank you for the $700,000 in Solana.”
The caption, which was visible to the more than 5.1 million Instagram followers of McDonald’s account, included an emoji depicting the flag of India.
McDonald’s said in a statement it was “aware of an isolated incident that impacted our social media accounts earlier today.”
Hackers broke into the official Instagram page of McDonald’s and used it to promote a fake cryptocurrency. Instagram / @mcdonalds
“We have resolved the issue on those accounts and apologize to our fans for any offensive language posted during that time,” McDonald’s said.
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In the parlance of cryptocurrency, a “rug pull” is a type of scam in which creators of a cryptocurrency withdraw funds from a coin’s liquidity pool and disappear — leaving investors with tokens that are worthless.
A “rug pull” is normally executed by creating the fake token and then aggressively promoting it on social media and cryptocurrency forums online.
The creators build hype around the digital coin and encourage investors to get in on the ground floor before its value skyrockets.
When enough liquidity has been amassed by pairing the fake coin with more established cryptocurrencies such as ethereum, the creators withdraw the liquidity, causing the value to plummet to zero.
The scammers then delete the social media accounts and remove their online presence — making it difficult for investors to track them down so that they can recover their money.
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Crypto hackers claim to have made $700,000 by promoting a meme coin named after Grimace. McDonaldâs
The hackers claim they targeted McDonald’s social media account and used it to promote a fake meme coin known as “GRIMACE” on the Solana network — a high-performance blockchain platform designed for decentralized cryptocurrencies.
Within 30 minutes, the fake token went from zero to $25 million in value before crashing, according to the news site Cryptopolitan.
Guillaume Huin, a senior marketing director for McDonald’s, appeared to have his account hacked as well.
His social media pages on X and Instagram included posts promoting the fake coin — one of which referred to “a McDonald’s experiment on Solana.”
The account belonging to a senior marketing official with the fast food chain also appears to have been hacked. Shutterstock
The posts promoting the fake cryptocurrency were later deleted.
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Grimace is the large purple character created by McDonald’s as part of the fast food chain’s marketing and advertising campaign.
New York Mets baseball fans who are superstitious about their team note that ever since Grimace threw out the ceremonial first pitch before the June 12 game against the Miami Marlins, the club turned its season around — going from a losing record to playoff contention.
Over the past 24 hours, Internet Computer’sICP/USD price rose 3.27% to $7.46. This continues its positive trend over the past week where it has experienced a 2.0% gain, moving from $7.16 to its current price. As it stands right now, the coin’s all-time high is $700.65.
The chart below compares the price movement and volatility for Internet Computer over the past 24 hours (left) to its price movement over the past week (right). The gray bands are Bollinger Bands, measuring the volatility for both the daily and weekly price movements. The wider the bands are, or the larger the gray area is at any given moment, the larger the volatility.
The trading volume for the coin has tumbled 24.0% over the past week along with the circulating supply of the coin, which has fallen 0.03%. This brings the circulating supply to 469.20 million. According to our data, the current market cap ranking for ICP is #29 at $3.49 billion.
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This article was generated by Benzinga’s automated content engine and reviewed by an editor.
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Major cryptocurrencies experienced declines on Wednesday, ahead of key U.S. economic data and speeches from policymakers that are expected to advocate for interest rate cuts.
As of 12:15 pm IST, Bitcoin was down 2.3%, trading at $59,656, while Ethereum fell 2.8% to $2,602. The global cryptocurrency market cap also dropped by 1.9%, settling at around $2.11 trillion over the last 24 hours.
Later on Wednesday, preliminary revisions to U.S. labor data are expected, with a significant downward adjustment anticipated, potentially supporting the case for cutting interest rates. Federal Reserve minutes are also expected to reinforce a dovish stance.
Crypto Tracker
“Bitcoin had another unsuccessful attempt at breaching the $60,700 critical resistance and is now consolidating below $60,000. The market remains cautious ahead of the U.S. jobless claims data release tomorrow. There’s a strong chance that Bitcoin could rally toward $61,000 if the data indicates a drop in claims,” said Vikram Subburaj, CEO of Giottus.Edul Patel, CEO of Mudrex, commented, “Bitcoin is trading at $59,000 due to a lack of momentum for significant upward movements, largely influenced by stronger confidence in the global economy, ongoing geopolitical tensions, and a downturn in spot Bitcoin ETFs. BTC has yet to gather enough strength for a sharp move. The support level now lies at $58,100, with resistance at $60,600.”Other popular cryptocurrencies like BNB (-1.7%), Solana (-2.5%), XRP (-2.2%), Dogecoin (-0.7%), Chainlink (-0.7%), and Litecoin (-4.5%) also saw declines.The volume of all stablecoins is currently $57.09 billion, making up 93.18% of the total crypto market’s 24-hour volume, according to CoinMarketCap.Over the past 24 hours, the market cap of Bitcoin, the world’s largest cryptocurrency, dropped to $1.176 trillion, with Bitcoin’s dominance standing at 55.81%, per CoinMarketCap. BTC’s 24-hour trading volume decreased by 7.2% to $26.9 billion.
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“Bitcoin is currently trading at $59,600. Breaking the $60,000 level could push BTC toward $61,000; however, if it fails, it might drop lower towards the $54,000 range in the short term,” said Sathvik Vishwanath, Co-Founder & CEO of Unocoin.
(Disclaimer: The views expressed by experts are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of The Economic Times.)
China is closely monitoring the use of virtual assets in money laundering activities, according to the country’s highest court, in a move that legal experts say could increase the risk of prosecution for trading cryptocurrency on the mainland.
Using virtual assets to transfer or convert criminal proceeds is among a range of money laundering methods that violate China’s criminal law, according to a judicial interpretation published on Monday by the Supreme People’s Court and the main agency responsible for legal prosecution, the Supreme People’s Procuratorate.
The top court’s judicial interpretation increases the legal risks faced by mainland Chinese cryptocurrency investors when making trades, Shao Shiwei, a lawyer at Shanghai-based Mankun Law Firm, wrote in a post on WeChat.
“From now on, it will be more difficult for USDT merchants to operate and for ordinary people to occasionally trade cryptocurrencies because of potentially high legal risks,” Shao wrote, referring to the world’s biggest stablecoin. Tether’s USDT stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency pegged to the US dollar.
Money laundering related to the use of virtual assets, such as cryptocurrencies, has become an urgent focus in Chinese authorities’ crackdown on financial crimes. Photo: Shutterstock
If ordinary investors happen to receive proceeds from criminal activities during the buying or selling of virtual assets, they could be held as suspects in a money laundering case, according to Shao. Crypto investors on the mainland must be more cautious to avoid inadvertently taking part in money laundering and other illegal activities, she added.
That judicial interpretation was released amid the constant “innovation and upgrade” in money laundering methods, including use of cryptocurrencies and game tokens, that have become more difficult to tackle in today’s internet age, Chen Xueyong, deputy chief judge of the top court’s No 3 Criminal Adjudication Tribunal, said at a press briefing on Monday.
It marked the first time that virtual assets have been explicitly mentioned in an official criminal law interpretation, providing a greater sense of urgency to implementing revisions to the country’s outdated Anti-Money-Laundering (AML) Law.
A proposed AML law amendment, which is expected to be passed next year, is expected to involve a sharpened focus on prosecuting crimes related to the use of cryptocurrencies to transfer assets abroad.
A view of one of the courts inside the Supreme People’s Court of China in Beijing. Photo: AFP
Calling out virtual asset-based money laundering in the judicial interpretation is not only a response to the highly frequent occurrence of such activities, but it is also aimed at courts to guide their determination of related cases, according to Liu Honglin, founder of Mankun law firm, which focuses on issues in the blockchain industry.
The new interpretation, however, does not equate cryptocurrency trading with money laundering, or change mainland China’s cryptocurrency policies in any way, Liu said.
At present, various crypto-related businesses, including cryptocurrency mining and initial coin offerings are banned on the mainland. Beijing, meanwhile, has given Hong Kong the green light to regulate and support the operations of virtual-asset businesses.
Still, investors on the mainland have stayed active in the market and remain important participants in many international cypto exchanges. Chinese cryptocurrency investors made US$1.15 billion in 2023 to rank fourth behind those in the United States, the United Kingdom and Vietnam, according to an international survey published in March by New York-based blockchain research firm Chainalysis.
