Myanmar’s military leader Min Aung Hlaing had his official X account hacked on Saturday, and the attackers wasted no time. They used the account to announce a fake meme coin launch, claiming it was the “national crypto of the Republic of Myanmar.”
Within minutes, many fake meme tokens popped up, all claiming to be the official Myanmar meme coin. At least one of them— called MYANMAR—collapsed by 95% almost immediately after it launched.
Screenshot of several now delated tweets by the potentially hacked X account of Myanmar’s Prime Minister. Source: X/Twitter
The account , posing as the State Administration Council Chairman, made many now-deleted posts hyping the coin for hours. Despite warnings from the community, the account went ahead with its “launch” anyway, dropping this statement:
“Today, we are launching $BIRMAS—an experiment designed to show how something as simple as a meme can unite people, support national development, and put the Republic of the Union of Myanmar on the world stage.”
Weirdly enough, that post was deleted less than 10 minutes after it went up.
Scammers have made a trend out of taking over high-profile political accounts to promote fraudulent tokens. Just two weeks earlier, hackers compromised the X account of Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and used it to shill a fake MALAYSIA token. The project rug-pulled for $1.7 million, leaving investors empty-handed.
In late January, the Cuban government’s official X account was also hacked. A fake “Official Cuba Coin” was launched, and like clockwork, it turned out to be a fraudulent cash grab.
This is a developing story.
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