McDonald's Instagram account seemingly hacked to promote Solana token 'Grimace'

Quick Take

  • The fast-food chain’s Instagram account appeared to have been hacked to promote a Solana memecoin.
  • GRIMACE token shot to a market capitalization of $20 million before plummeting to less than $1 million.

McDonald's Instagram account seems to have been compromised in order to promote a Solana memecoin.

Earlier Wednesday, the McDonald's account on the social media platform appeared to promote a Solana-based memecoin called GRIMACE. The token rapidly rose to a market capitalization of about $20 million before drastically following to below $1 million, according to Pump.fun data.

While the Instagram post promoting the token has been deleted, it appears in one post the GRIMACE memecoin was dubbed "a McDonald's experiment on Solana."

Simultaneously, the fast food giant's Instagram profile page also appeared to have been compromised with someone writing "thank you for the $700,000 in Solana" following a mention of a rug pull.

Memecoin mania

Pump.fun, which launched in January, is a Solana-based memecoin generator that has facilitated the creation of over 1.8 million memecoins.

Overall, the Solana-based memecoin market has experienced pronounced volatility in August. Last week, Solana set a new record for weekly outflows, according to CoinShares, which blamed the surge in outflows on a sharp decline in memecoin trading.

A couple of days ago, Pump.Fun's cumulative revenue was on the verge of surpassing $100 million.


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About Author

RT Watson is a senior reporter at The Block who covers a wide array of topics including U.S.-based companies, blockchain gaming and NFTs. Formerly covered entertainment at The Wall Street Journal, where he wrote about Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros. and the creator economy while focusing primarily on technological disruption across media. Previous to that he covered corporate, economic and political news in Brazil while at Bloomberg. RT has interviewed a diverse cast of characters including CEOs, media moguls, top influencers, politicians, blue-collar workers, drug traffickers and convicted criminals. Holds a master's degree in Digital Sociology.

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