Scammers took over Cuba’s X account and launched and rugged three memecoins within 24 hours. CUBA, the first memecoin launched by the hackers, pumped to a $30M market cap before being rug pulled. All the memecoins were launched through the Pump.fun.
The hackers quickly launched CUBA, CUBA 2.0, and JUSTICE FOR CUBA meme tokens but rugged them all within 24 hours. ‘Cancillería de Cuba’, the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs official X account, has since deleted all original posts, suggesting a possible hack. CUBA memecoin’s quick rise and fall also drew attention from Crypto Twitter.
Web3 architect SolKeeper implied that the scammers took advantage of the low vigilance of traders due to the FOMO experienced by market participants.
12/ Hacked Twitter Of CUBA
Apparently CUBA's official twitter account was compromised and the hackers used to launch multiple coins, host live spaces on X, and execute rug pulls.
So the rugpull was done by the hackers not the official CUBA Country.
Currenty the CUBA Twitter… pic.twitter.com/NPWk6RkdzQ
— KaKaSHii 🥷 (@KakashiAirdrops) January 21, 2025
The hackers compromised the Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs official X account and used it to launch the CUBA token and host live X Spaces. They quickly abandoned the first meme project and withdrew all the liquidity. Crypto researcher Rei claimed that the viral discussions of a ‘country takeover’ turned the incident into a protest movement, with an 80% price swing ‘reflecting chaos’. The market responded to social momentum, leading to extreme volatility as entry prices ranged between 0.002 and 0.017.
CUBA memecoin’s unexpected launch raised doubt about its authenticity after its market cap surpassed $158 million in hours before dropping to $2.1 million on Monday. DEXScreener data showed that CUBA’s market cap had since dropped to $1.9M on January 22nd—the coin’s sudden decline left a lot of questions unanswered. Investigations into whether hackers compromised the ‘Cancillería de Cuba’ X account during the tokens’ promotion period are still ongoing.
The Anti Rug Agent (ARA) platform gave the CUBA memecoin a safety score of 44.15%, up from 41.56% on Monday. The highest individual holder owned 11% of the coin’s total supply, up from 4.2% on Monday. ARA’s data recorded over 14K active wallets 5 hours after its launch. The top ten holders owned about 24.37% of the token’s supply worth $595K. The top 20 wallets, however, averaged nearly 2.5% of the total supply, suggesting concentrated ownership, confirmed Rei’s report.
Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs disables its X account
The ‘hacked’ Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs X account was taken down on Monday following accusations of promoting and ‘rug-pulling’ the Solana-based memecoins; however, the account has now been restored. Early investors believed that the Cuban government had joined the memecoin bandwagon.
Screenshots circulating online showed another token, ‘CUBA 4.0, ’ further fueling speculation of potential hacking. CUBA memecoin hype gained traction after the Trump-related tokens—TRUMP and MELANIA— recorded larger gains shortly after release.
The Cuban Foreign Affairs Ministry briefly shared a post acknowledging ‘difficulties’ before its account was blocked and posts deleted. The account hosted an X Space titled ‘Sorry from CUBA’ where an apology was issued by someone claiming to be a government representative. Unfortunately, the session recording was also deleted afterwards, and the Cuban government has yet to release an official statement about the incident.
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