On August 21, scammers hacked McDonald’s official Instagram page and used the fast food giant’s social media pages to promote and advertise a memecoin called “Grimace,” before stealing over $700,000 from Solana.
According to screenshots shared by X, McDonald’s Instagram page posted a series of posts promoting a fake token based on the fast-food chain’s purple mascot, Grimace.
Screenshot from McDonald’s Instagram promoting Grimace tokens. Source: X
Several posts described the fake Memecoin as “Solana’s McDonald’s experiment,” which spread to 5.1 million followers worldwide.
According to data from blockchain analytics service Bubblemaps, the hacker first used the Solana memecoin distributor pump.fun to wipe out 75% of the total circulating supply of Grimace tokens, which were then split between about 100 different wallets.
According to DexScreener data, after the post on the official McDonald’s account, the value of the GRIMACE mimecoin skyrocketed from a market cap of several thousand dollars to as high as $25 million in just 30 minutes.
As the hacker dumped all of his tokens, the token price plummeted, and in just 40 minutes, Mimecoin’s value plummeted to $650,000.
GRIMACE’s value soared to a million in 30 minutes. Source: Dexscreener
Bubblemaps revealed that the hackers made a total profit of approximately $700,000 in Solana (SOL) through their efforts.
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After the attack, the hackers edited the bio section of McDonald’s page to boast about their accomplishments and shared that they had made a total of $700,000 through rug pull.
The hacker wrote, “Sorry, my black man. I just got hacked by India_X_Kr3w. Thanks for the $700k from Solana.”
A screenshot showing McDonald’s Instagram bio at the time it was hacked. Source: X
Posts promoting Mimecoin and Bio have now been deleted and normalized.
McDonald’s said in a statement to the New York Post that it was aware of an “isolated incident” affecting its social media accounts on August 21.
McDonald’s said, “We have addressed the issue with the account in question and apologize to fans for any offensive language posted during that time.”
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