‘Buy $DOJA or else…’ Doja Cat’s X account hacked; investors lose $1.6M

• Doja Cat’s X account was hacked, resulting in the promotion of scam token $DOJA. 
• The scam token surged to a $1.65 million market cap before collapsing to $16,820.

In an unexpected turn of events, the social media account of the renowned rapper Amala Ratna Zandile Dlamini, also known as Doja Cat, was allegedly hacked to promote a fraudulent cryptocurrency scheme.

This malicious act reportedly led to investor losses exceeding $1.6 million. This highlighted the potential pitfalls that come with the rise of celebrity-inspired memecoins. 

The hack explained

The incident took place on the 8th of July, according to a post by the celebrity news account Daily Trends.

As per the post, Doja Cat’s X (formerly Twitter) account posted an image of the rapper wearing armor and wielding a sword, token’s Solana [SOL] contract address, and a caption that read,  

Source: Daily Trends/X

However, the post has since been deleted. The post also took a jab at Iggy Azalea’s recently launched celebrity memecoin, Mother Iggy [MOTHER].

However, Azalea appeared to be cool with the situation. Recognizing that the post didn’t originate from Doja Cat, she said,

“Get rugged if yall want but I’m cool w that girl irl so yall f**ked up w that tweet hackers.” 

Impact of the scam

Needless to say, soon after the post went viral, $DOJA surged to a market capitalization of $1.65 million.

However, once the scam was uncovered, the market cap plummeted to $16,820, resulting in investor losses exceeding $1.63 million.

Further confirming the matter, Doja Cat herself clarified, 

“It is not me, it’s literally an imposter. You guys do not believe whatever that was, okay? It was someone else.” 

Some X users expressed concern on the matter, as @hardtingz admitted, 

“i’m crying cause the way they were tweeting, i literally thought that was herself.” 

Not the first time!

That being said, this incident isn’t an isolated case. Recently, the official X account of the heavy metal band Metallica also fell victim to a similar scam, promoting a SOL token under the ticker METAL.

Additionally, HULKAMANIA [HULK] experienced a significant loss of $15 million in market capitalization for the same reason.

Ergo, Ethereum [ETH] co-founder Vitalik Buterin aptly highlighted the risks accompanying the surge in celebrity memecoins, when he stated,

“‘Financialization as a means toward an end’, I can respect if the end is worthy (healthcare, open source software, art, etc).’”