The Twitter account of heavy metal band Metallica was apparently hacked late Tuesday and used to promote a Solana meme coin, continuing a recent trend of celebrities being targeted to share pump-and-dump scams purporting to be the real deal.
Although the tweets—which included a Twitter Spaces audio call and replies to other users—were deleted within 90 minutes, the pimped METAL token saw more than $10 million in trading volume before crashing badly.
The apparent scammers claimed the token was being offered in collaboration with ticketing giant Ticketmaster and crypto payments platform MoonPay, and that holders would be able to use it for discounts on tickets and merchandise.
The incident comes less than a week after a similar scam targeted the followers of rapper 50 Cent (aka Curtis Jackson), with legendary pro wrestler Hulk Hogan a target earlier this month.
Given the frequency of such scams, Crypto Twitter swiftly and broadly concluded the tweets were fake. MoonPay President Keith Grossman chimed in early to say METAL was not supported on the platform.
The scammers responded to Grossman, writing, “We have been in touch with your team via email.” MoonPay then tweeted a direct warning about the scam and cited a popular song from the heavy metal giants, saying that anyone offering the METAL token is “not the master of puppets, they’re the master of scams.”
The commandeered Metallica account then blocked the company.
In its brief moment in the spotlight, the METAL token saw more than $10 million worth of trading volume over 30,000 transactions as its price spiked as high as $0.003. It has since collapsed almost entirely to under $0.00007. The token’s total market cap sits at just $65,000 at present.
Unsurprisingly, Twitter users seized on the opportunity to make Metallica jokes. The account for LimeWire, which was once a file-sharing service that vexxed Metallica and other bands and musicians before being shut down for facilitating music piracy in 2010, got in on the action.
“Hey Lars, is this you?” LimeWire tweeted, referencing the outspoken Metallica drummer and co-founder Lars Ulrich who railed against music sharing services back when.
The revived LimeWire brand is today a generative AI platform for musicians and other artists—with its own $LMWR token—after first relaunching as a music NFT marketplace.
The scam targeting the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees is only the latest in a string of celebrity-themed pump-and-dumps for Solana meme coins. The waters are muddied considerably, however, as several celebrities have launched their own official tokens in recent weeks.
Earlier this week, singer Jason Derulo launched his own JASON token, apparently in collaboration with Sahil Arora, a crypto promoter who has already been entangled in disputed meme coin launches with celebrities like Iggy Azalea and Caitlyn Jenner.
Edited by Andrew Hayward
