(Bloomberg) — McDonald’s Corp.’s Instagram account was hacked Wednesday in what appears to be a scam involving a cryptocurrency named after Grimace.
Screenshots posted by one X user showed a post on the chain’s Instagram leading to a “McDonald’s experiment” on the Solana blockchain platform. Another asked users to post whether they owned a coin named after Grimace, the chain’s purple character, before an image appeared saying that participants had been scammed out of $700,000.
Speculators are issuing thousands of so-called meme coins every day – often digital images of dogs or cartoon characters tied to blockchains. The coins are often targeted by pump-and-dump schemes, where creators promote them on X and other platforms and dump their holdings as soon as other buyers emerge.
McDonald’s said in a statement that its social media accounts were an “isolated incident.” “We have resolved the issue with these accounts and apologize to our fans for the offensive language posted during this time,” the company said.
As of 5:30 p.m. New York, the posts on the McDonald’s account were no longer visible.
Cryptocurrency-related scams and fraud are a major concern for regulators, and users of social media platforms have repeatedly become targets of such schemes.
Social media accounts of celebrities, politicians, influencers and major companies on networks such as Instagram and X have been hijacked with posts asking users to purchase a specific token or share their credentials with phishing sites.
In other cases, scammers use AI-based image and audio generation tools to create social videos that make it appear as if celebrities and influencers are promoting a particular cryptocurrency, even though no such promotion has taken place.
– With assistance from Olga Kharif and Michael P. Regan.
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