The legend of professional wrestling, Hulk Hogan, passed away yesterday, sparking a wave of meme coins and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Many of these tokens quickly gained popularity, but the biggest was a scam.
Last year, there were reports of Hogan's X account (formerly known as Twitter) being hacked to promote a fake meme coin. Since yesterday, the activity of this dormant coin has increased.
Fraudsters are exploiting Hulk Hogan's popularity.
The meme coin sector will seize any opportunity to launch a new popular token, and the death of legendary wrestler Hulk Hogan is no exception. This famous figure passed away yesterday, prompting the immediate emergence of the "Hulk Hogan Tribute" token.
Observers quickly discovered that the "HULK" token was a scam, yet it reached a market value of $7 million before collapsing. As the immediate and total market crash suggests, the "Hulk Hogan Tribute" was a traditional scam.
On social media, many users openly admitted to running bot campaigns to promote the Hulk coin, aiming to inflate the coin's value as much as possible. Real-life tragedies often become fertile ground for these scams, so it seems clear and straightforward.
However, this trick is not the only one that spread today on the Web3 platform bearing Hulk Hogan's name. For instance, traders have also launched NFT collections in his honor, and a variety of meme coin projects are currently active in the DEX environment.
Yet none achieved significant success like the Hulk Hogan tribute campaign and the associated social media bot campaigns. Interestingly, Hogan's account on the X platform was hacked last year to promote a scam token.
The rise of fraudulent meme coins
Hogan's team quickly regained control and deleted the posts, and the "Hulkamania" coin faced a similar pullback. But today, traders revived the coin, enjoying a final surge of activity following the wrestler's death.
As the chart shows, this HULK token also collapsed, but its activity is completely different from a rug pull scam. Ironically, last year's rug pull was much more honest than the asset launched less than 24 hours ago.
It's true that it didn't exceed a seventh of the market value, but the slowing decline and unexpected highs provided numerous opportunities for profit. On several occasions, retail investors continued trading the meme coin even after it became clear that the original project was a scam.
Clearly, the death of Hulk Hogan ignited this activity, along with scams related to rug pulls. There is a potential lesson here about the meme coin market. It may be difficult or impossible to warn investors about artificial hype bubbles, but genuine community enthusiasm exists.