protos.com
The official Instagram account of FC Barcelona was hacked yesterday to promote a phony crypto project on memecoin platform Pump Fun.
The hackers claimed that FC Barcelona was “building something massive on Solana,” and promised users that “we’re going to the moon” as it revealed the token’s address across two posts.
However, there’s no such announcement from the club’s official site.
FC Barcelona has over 144 million followers on its Instagram account. At one point, one of the posts, which was viewable for several hours before it was eventually taken down, had 169,000 views, over 1,600 comments, and 1,400 reposts.
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The token, as expected, rose and fell like many rugpulls have in the past. It was created at 0:45 AM UTC, and reached a market of $3 million before plummeting back down to $47,800.
Volume for the token over the past 24 hours was $3.5 million, and its creator, under the account DmPZBKYXHwE8MFTkUBEWiwEVRek1NNJkje5vcEoWRDEH, made almost $26,000 in creator rewards.
An FC Barcelona crypto project isn’t a completely fanciful idea. Back in 2023, the club partnered with Socios to release a “fan token” and the club has previously donned crypto sponsor logos such as Whitebit and Chilix.
Whitebit, a crypto exchange with links to Justin Sun, is still sponsoring the team today.