Merkle Science reports $500M lost to memecoin scams in 2024
A report from Merkle Science, a crypto intelligence platform, revealed that over $500 million was lost to memecoin rug pulls and scams throughout 2024.
These fraudulent activities frequently utilized social engineering tactics, exploiting the trust and credibility of celebrities and well-known tech figures to deceive victims.
The report highlighted a significant scam that involved the compromise of French footballer Kylian Mbappe's social media account. The scammers posted a link to a dubious memecoin, which subsequently achieved a $460 million market cap before the value was abruptly withdrawn in a rug pull event.
Another notable incident mentioned was a scam that used the popularity of music artist Wiz Khalifa, who has 35.7 million social media followers. A fake WIZ token was promoted and reached a $3.4 million market cap before it crashed to nothing, leaving investors with substantial losses.
Robert Whitaker, director of law enforcement affairs at Merkle Science, expressed to CoinDesk the sophistication and coordination behind these scams. He emphasized that these operations are not merely opportunistic but are designed to exploit trust on a large scale, with hackers leveraging the credibility of public figures to manipulate markets.
The report by Merkle Science also provided insights into the platforms where these scams were most prevalent. It indicated that 75% of all attacks occurred on a particular social media platform, with another 19% on YouTube.
Additionally, it was found that 44% of the social engineering scams led to rug pulls, and phishing attacks accounted for an equal percentage of the total scams.
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