50 Cent targeted by hackers pushing fake cryptocurrency

Famend rapper 50 Cent has revealed that hackers hijacked his X account and private web site to advertise a faux cryptocurrency. 

On June 21, 50 Cent — whose actual identify is Curtis James Jackson — took to Instagram to alert his 32.8 million followers that each his X account and private web site, thisis50.com, had been compromised. 

In accordance with the multi-platinum-selling artist, the hackers used the platforms to endorse a brand new meme coin named GUNIT, after the hip-hop group 50 Cent based within the late Nineties. 

50 Cent has no reference to the faux cryptocurrency. The “Expendables 4” star defined that the hackers exploited his in depth social media attain to draw buyers.

The rip-off — a pump-and-dump scheme — concerned creating the GUNIT token and utilizing 50 Cent’s important affect — he has round 12.9 million followers on X — to inflate the token’s worth. As buyers poured in, the worth of GUNIT reportedly soared, solely to plummet to $0.00016 after the scammers jettisoned their holdings.

50 Cent shared a number of screenshots on Instagram, exhibiting the meteoric rise and abrupt fall of GUNIT’s market worth. The hackers are believed to have made off with as a lot as $300,000,000 in simply half-hour. 

Nonetheless, an evaluation of GUNIT buying and selling exercise on Dex Screener reveals that the token’s whole buying and selling quantity within the final 16 hours is simply shy of $20 million. 

Notably, 5 accounts offloaded greater than 670 million GUNIT tokens price upwards of $2.3 million. The meme coin presently has 2,799 holders and a market cap of $330,000.

This newest incident isn’t 50 Cent’s first brush with crypto. In 2018, reviews emerged that the rapper had made hundreds of thousands by accepting Bitcoin (BTC) as cost for his album, “Animal Ambition” in 2014.

In accordance with TMZ, 50 Cent amassed round 700 BTC, then price roughly $662 every, netting him about $463,000.

TMZ estimated that the singer and actor’s BTC stash would have been price between $7 million and $8.5 million in 2018 when it printed the story.

Nonetheless, Jackson, who additionally produces a number of hit TV reveals, denied these claims in courtroom, stating that whereas he did settle for the cryptocurrency as cost, it didn’t lead to any important earnings for him.