McDonald’s Instagram hackers make $700K shilling Grimace memecoin

Scammers who hacked the official McDonald’s Instagram page on Aug. 21 made off with over $700,000 in Solana after using the fast food giant’s social media page to promote and rug a memecoin called “Grimace.”

According to screenshots shared on X, the McDonald’s Instagram page made a series of posts promoting a sham token based on the fast food chain’s purple mascot, Grimace.

Screenshot of the McDonald’s Instagram promoting Grimace token. Source: X

Several posts described the sham memecoin as a “McDonald’s experiment on Solana,” which was blasted to its 5.1 million followers around the world.

According to data from blockchain analytics service Bubblemaps, the hacker first used Solana memecoin deployer pump.fun to snap up 75% of the total circulating supply of the Grimace token before splitting it between roughly 100 different wallets. 

Following the posts from the official McDonald’s account, the value of the GRIMACE memecoin rallied from a market capitalization of a few thousand dollars to as high as $25 million within 30 minutes, per DexScreener data . 

The token’s price then plummeted as the hacker dumped their holdings, and within 40 minutes, the value of the memecoin slumped as low as $650,000. 

The value of GRIMACE surged to million in 30 minutes. Source: Dexscreener

Bubblemaps said the hackers made off with a total profit of approximately $700,000 in Solana ( SOL ) from their efforts. 

Related: Ava Labs COO confirms X account hacked after posting memecoin

Following the attack, the hacker also edited the bio section of the McDonald’s page to brag about their exploits, also sharing that they had netted a total of $700,000 from the rug pull.

“Sorry mah n-gga you have just been rug pulled by India_X_Kr3w thank you for the $700,000 in Solana,” wrote the hacker. 

Screenshot showing McDonald’s Instagram bio when it was hacked. Source: X

The posts promoting the memecoin and the bio have now been removed and returned to normal. 

McDonald’s told the New York Post in a statement that it was aware of an “isolated incident” that had impacted its social media accounts on Aug. 21. 

“We have resolved the issue on those accounts and apologize to our fans for any offensive language posted during that time,” McDonald’s said.

Magazine: How crypto bots are ruining crypto — including auto memecoin rug pulls