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Renowned rapper Curtis James Jackson III, better known as “50 Cent,” has claimed that his X account and website were hacked, with hackers promoting a cryptocurrency pump-and-dump token scam.
Also referred to as a “Rug pull,” fraudulent developers created a new crypto token, “GUNIT,” and used Jackson’s large X following of approximately 12.9 million followers to attract more investors and pump up the price before draining its value. The token’s price then crashed to $0.00016.
On June 21, Jackson <a href="https://www.instagram.com/50cent/p/C8fW3MrO46P/?hl=en&amp;img_index=1" target="_blank" rel="noopener nofollow">posted</a> to his 32.8 million Instagram followers claiming that his X account and website had been hacked and that a significant amount of the victim’s funds had been drained from the project.
“Twitter worked quickly to lock my account back down. Whoever did this made $300,000,000 in 30 minutes,” Jackson said before declaring that he has “no association with this crypto.”
<figure data-ct-non-breakable="true">
 <img src="https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2024-06/0127bb7f-0878-4e0e-8c20-72f330fdf898.png" alt="" title="">
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 Source: 50 Cent
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He posted three images showing posts from others in the crypto community discussing the GUNIT memecoin. The charts show a sharp price spike followed by a sharp decline — a typical rug-pull pattern.
Cointelegraph reviewed trading data of the GUNIT memecoin on Dex Screener, showing that multiple wallet addresses sold significant amounts of the token. Four accounts sold more than $100,000 of the memecoin following its promotion on the rapper’s X account.
50 Cent claimed that users had been defrauded of over $300 million as a result, a figure that grossly overstates the value that anonymous traders made from selling GUNIT tokens. At the time of publication, the token had a total trading volume of $19.4 million.
<figure data-ct-non-breakable="true">
 <img src="https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2024-06/e5a79ec3-854c-4917-b12e-526f05fd4ce9.jpg" alt="" title="">
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 Trading data from Dex Screener shows that one GUNIT holder sold $721,000 worth of the token following its promotion on 50 Cent’s X account. Source: Dex Screener
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The news comes after a <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/vitalik-buterin-slams-celebrity-memecoins">string of celebrities</a> have been associated with cryptocurrency launches in recent times.
<h3 data-ct-non-breakable="true" id="rise-in-celebrities-promoting-memecoins">Rise in celebrities promoting memecoins&nbsp;</h3>
Caitlyn Jenner, one of the most recent celebrities to <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/sahil-arora-banned-celebrity-memecoin-scams">enter the crypto memecoin market</a>, caused confusion within the industry over mixed messages following the launch of her own token.&nbsp;
Speculations about her X account being hacked were initially dismissed but resurfaced later. While at the same time, she was defending the JENNER token itself.
On May 27, Cointelegraph reported that Jenner’s X account had posted a statement urging followers to “send me some of your favourite memecoins.”
Related: <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/memecoins-cornerstone-crypto-galaxy-digital-novogratz">Memecoins are a ‘cornerstone’ of crypto — Galaxy’s Novogratz</a>
While she later took the post down, <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/caitlyn-jenner-joins-rich-the-kid-alleging-scammed-sahil">she doubled down</a> on promoting JENNER. 
“That ad for a third party token was taken down! As I have said from the beginning the only focus I have is $Jenner and the ad I posted confused too many people, and was not worth it. Like I had said time and time again I’m fully focused on my token $Jenner,” she posted on X.
Magazine: <a href="https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/polkadot-indy-500-driver-conor-daly-dad-holds-dot/">Polkadot’s Indy 500 driver Conor Daly: ‘My dad holds DOT, how mad is that?’</a>

Rapper 50 Cent claims X account was hacked to promote celeb memecoin

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