GRIMACE meme coin suffers rug pull after promotion on hacked McDonald's Instagram account

McDonald's Instagram account suffered a hack on Wednesday after it promoted a Solana-based meme coin named after GRIMACE, one of its packaging characters. Following the hack, insider holders began to dump their tokens, driving the token's market cap from $20 million to $599K.

Crypto community reacts as GRIMACE token holders dump following McDonald's hack

Popular food restaurant McDonald's appears to have been the victim of a hack after its Instagram page began promoting a Solana-based meme coin earlier today. A series of posts on its page caused the meme coin called GRIMACE to climb to a $20 million market cap in just a few hours.

Following the hike in its market cap, the token suffered a rug pull after its major holders began to dump their holdings. Its market cap is currently down to under $600,000, according to Pump.fun data.

The alleged hackers named the token after Grimace, one of McDonald's fictional characters used in its ads. This move misled investors who must have bought the token following the Instagram hack. Following the rug pull, all the posts made to promote the token were taken down, including one that allegedly stated, "Thank you for the $700,000 in Solana."

The event is an example of why investors need to tread with caution when investing in newly launched meme tokens, as many of these highly volatile assets are liable to be scams.

Meanwhile, the newly launched Pump.fun competition SunPump on the Tron network has begun to garner massive attention, posing as the new meme coin launchpad replacement for the Solana meme coin generator.

SunPump, which was launched just 11 days ago, has generated over $1 million in revenue already. Additionally, SunDog, a recent meme coin launched on the platform, surged over 25% before declining 10%, according to CoinGecko data.