Jupiter recovers official X account after scammers promote MEOW

Solana-based dex aggregator Jupiter has recovered its X account after it was hijacked by cryptocurrency scammers who promoted a fraudulent meme coin.

According to a Feb. 6 X post, reassured users that no funds were ever at risk. They confirmed that all customer and treasury assets remain secure in multisig wallets. The attack was limited to Jupiter’s X account, with no other communication channels affected.

The hack transpired during the late hours of Feb. 5, with several community members sounding the alarm about suspicious activity. In a new deleted post, Jupiter Mobile’s X account quickly warned users not to click any links or purchase tokens promoted by the compromised main account.

Scammers used the opportunity to promote a meme coin theme around Jupiter’s cat mascot with the ticker MEOW, which allegedly surged to a $30 million market cap within seconds before the token’s developer sold their holdings, quickly wiping out all gains. All promotional posts have now been deleted.

Beanie, the pseudonymous founder of crypto venture capital firm GM Capital, criticized the irony of trusting protocols with billions in liquidity while they fail to secure their social media accounts, calling it a recurring paradox in the industry.

“Traders lost millions instantly on this Jupiter account hack. Literally in a matter of minutes,” he estimated.

The community wasn’t too happy about the whole situation, calling out Jupiter for not securing its account properly. Some were also frustrated that, even though Jupiter assured funds were safe, the losses from the scam couldn’t be recovered.

Others praised the team’s quick response and transparency about the breach, with one user stating that the incident reinforced their trust in the Jupiter team.

The incident may have added to some selling pressure on JUP, the platform’s native token, which had dropped over 5% during the aftermath.

Crypto scammers have long exploited the X accounts of prominent blockchain projects, celebrities, and public figures to push fraudulent tokens and phishing schemes.

Last month, Breaking Bad star Dean Norris became the latest victim after his X account was used to promote a sham token based on his persona. Scammers managed to inflate the token’s market cap to as high as $8.4 million at its peak before offloading their pre-acquired holdings.

Just days before, the official account of Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was locked due to what appeared to be a similar incident.