Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson always seems to have news. Last week he announced his X account was hacked and that in minutes scammers took $720,000. In all he claimed they made $300 million in 30 minutes. But how much of this is true?
Inside the Hack
The scam involved a new meme coin called “GUNIT” that launched on Friday, June 21. The rapper quickly took to Instagram to explain to his 32.8 million followers that he had no association with this cryptocurrency.
“My Twitter was hacked I have no association with this Crypto. Twitter worked quickly to lock my account back down. Whoever did this made $720,000 in 30 minutes,” he reportedly wrote. 50 Cent, who has about 13 million followers on X/Twitter, also shared screenshots of tweets from fans who had suspected a hack.
“Twitter worked quickly to lock my account back down. Whoever did this made $300,000,000 in 30 minutes,” Jackson added. Reportedly, he later amended that figure to $3 million.
50 Cent said hackers used his X account pull off a multimillion-dollar memecoin rug pull. A rug pull is a type of exit scam where a team raises money from investors and the public by selling a token, only to quietly shut down the project or abruptly disappear, according to CoinDesk. This results in the team stealing the raised funds and leaving investors with worthless tokens.
In 50 Cent’s case, the fraudulent developers created a new crypto token, “GUNIT,” encouraging Jackson’s followers to pump up the price before draining its value. The token’s price, which went as high as $0.016, ultimately dropped to $0.00016 as trading volume crashed, Coin Telegraph reported.
This incident is not isolated. In May, rapper Rich The Kid’s X/Twitter account was also hacked to promote a cryptocurrency scheme, resulting in significant losses for fans. In turn, Rich The Kid said he would launch a legitimate token.
How Much Of 50’s Claim is True
Cointelegraph looked into the trading data of the GUNIT memecoin on Dex Screener, revealing that multiple wallet addresses sold significant amounts of the token. Four accounts sold more than $100,000 of the memecoin following its hack of 50 Cent’s X account. Trading data revealed one GUNIT holder sold $721,000 worth of the token. Despite 50’s claim of a $300 million scam, the total trading volume was around $19.4 million.
