The official X account of the infamous heavy metal band Metallica was reportedly hacked on June 26.
Their X account seems to have been hacked by an unconfirmed group that later made posts about a Solana-based token having the Symbol “METAL”.
The stunt seems to be part of an unconventional attempt from the group to promote the coin to the wider audience including the individuals following the band’s X account.
In this article, we will look more into the details of the event and make commentary on the same.
What do we currently know about the event?
As per the details that we know about the first instance of the public taking note of something suspicious with the official account of Metallica in X was when they released a post talking about the launch of a new cryptocurrency with the band’s involvement.
What made the post suspicious was a similar event that happened in 2022 when a few other cryptocurrency groups tried to bank on the popularity of the band by issuing coin coins named “Metallica Crypto” which did not have anything to do with the band or any of its members.
The new post talked about the launch of a Solana-based coin named METAL.
The post claimed that the METAL token was being launched in partnership with Ticketmaster and MoonPay.
Even though none of the allegedly involved parties commented as an immediate response to the post they did however later put out an official statement on their X accounts stating that they have no relation to the token and have not signed any partnership with the group behind METAL token.
The MoonPay president Keith Grossman was the first to dismiss the claim on X by posting “Moonpay does NOT support METAL”
This was followed up later by the Official MoonPay account which responded by issuing a safety alert to all its followers saying the following: “If someone is offering you a $METAL token, they are not the master of puppets-they’re the master of scams” -referencing to one of the hit albums and single of the band from the year 1986.
From the details we can gather as of now Ticketmaster has not yet made any particular posts addressing the claims.
But it has been made pretty clear that the announcement was made without the permission of any of the parties that they mentioned in their post.
Now, let us look at what other posts were made by the hackers on the Metallica account and what their impact was on the METAL coin.
What was the impact of the Subsequent tweets on the token?
In the post that followed the initial post, the group promised the buyers of the token the ability to cash their token to redeem exclusive items which included free concert tickets and custom gaming consoles among other merchandise.
The posts that were made through the official account of Metallica did, however, achieve one of its intended purposes albeit only for a short period of time.
The price of the METAL token seems to have briefly reached a peak valuation of $3.37 million shortly after its launch before plummeting to a value of $90000 in market capitalization less than 3 hours after its hike.
As of the current state of the coin, the price seems to have lost close to 100% of its value from when it was at its high, and further comments have not been made from either the band or its management team.
Also, Read: The Rise Of Crypto Scams: How To Spot And Avoid Them?
Final Thoughts
From what we can observe from the whole Metallica’s X post saga we can take away a few things that could be useful to everyone when they plan to invest in cryptocurrencies.
The first key takeaway is the nature of the market and the way it responds to such news.
Even if the whole intended purpose was to be just a gimmick to temporarily stroke the interest of the wider crypto community and raise the price of the coin the group behind the post has achieved its goal of putting the name of the coin in front of a large audience in the simplest and the cheapest of ways possible.
Furthermore, The price hike and subsequent fall of the coin’s value after the post should be used as a warning by everyone who at any point had considered investing in a crypto coin before verifying its legitimacy.
It is to be noted that keeping note of such warnings and following good investment practices is the only way to achieve a satisfactory investment journey while dealing with cryptocurrency.
