Pokémon trading just got a whole lot different
In today’s day and age, there are various reasons why hackers would want to compromise big companies’ social media accounts. Selling cryptocurrency has become an increasingly popular get-rich-quick scheme in recent years, and it seems to be the main reason why hackers gained access to the official Pokémon account on X on Aug. For approximately 30 minutes, hackers took over the Pokémon X account in order to promote a memecoin called $POKEMON.
While some fans immediately assumed that Pokémon would never create or promote cryptocurrency and the account must have been hacked, others were curious about this themed memecoin. The hackers made the tweet look as legitimate as they could, for it to look like the creation of the coin was part of the celebrations for Pokémon’s 30th anniversary.
Even though many might not have believed the tweet, the Pokémon account has a total of eight million followers, meaning it reached fans on a global scale. On cryptocurrency exchange sites, it is possible to see that there were many transactions after the tweet was sent out. In total, over $3 million worth of $POKEMON transactions were made since the token was listed. Its current market cap is about $355,000, but this has fluctuated greatly in the past few hours.
Unfortunately, the AI disclaimer next to the coin’s name indicates that it was launched by the official Pokémon account. Fans should be very aware that this is not the case. In a now-deleted post, Pokémon confirmed that the account was hacked and that it would be looking into it in order to understand how this could’ve happened. Both the original post from the hackers and Pokémon’s response have been saved and shared by X users.
Official entertainment social media accounts have been increasingly targeted by hackers in recent months. It’s hard not to draw parallels with the recent Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks, which have also been used to promote a cryptocurrency. Perhaps the activities of the group known as Cyberleek have emboldened more hackers to target prestigious companies with crypto schemes.