On July 23, Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, faced an unexpected breach of his X account. Hackers took control and posted about a new memecoin called Vladhood ($VLAD), claiming it was Robinhood’s official mascot token and that it would soon appear on the Robinhood app.
The token quickly raised suspicion. Just two hours before the announcement, ten crypto wallets were loaded with funds via Relay. These wallets then bought $VLAD tokens minutes after the post, accounting for approximately 70% of the token’s ownership cluster. Observers saw this as a red flag, suggesting that a coordinated group had prior knowledge of the launch and arranged the wallets in advance.
Shortly after the buying spree triggered by the announcement, the same wallets began dumping their holdings, a classic pump-and-dump tactic. Estimates from blockchain monitoring firm MLM put the attackers' profit from this scam at roughly $1.2 to $1.3 million, equivalent to about 650 ETH.
Tenev later regained control of his account and confirmed the hack. This incident came amid the growing buzz around the Robinhood Chain, Robinhood’s newly launched blockchain. The network has drawn more than $750 million in on-chain assets since its debut this month, and active daily users recently topped 300,000, with transaction volumes hitting nearly 10 million in a single day. Such figures made the $VLAD launch initially believable to many.
Unfortunately, this isn’t the first time prominent figures' social media accounts have been compromised to promote fake tokens. Earlier in 2024, celebrities like 50 Cent and Doja Cat had their X accounts hacked to push fraudulent memecoins.
The core sign that exposed the scam was the 70% ownership concentration of the $VLAD token. Combined with the booming activity on Robinhood Chain, the scene was ripe for deceiving investors into thinking the coin was legitimate.
Robinhood CEO’s Twitter Got Hacked to Push a Bogus Meme Token showed a similar pattern in recent months. With the rise of such attacks, users should remain cautious despite excitement around new blockchain projects.
