For about 30 minutes on Aug., the official Pokémon account on X wasn’t posting about Pokémon. It was selling a memecoin called $POKEMON.
That’s the whole scheme, and it worked well enough to move real money. Over $3 million worth of $POKEMON transactions have been made since the token was listed, according to cryptocurrency exchange sites. Its current market cap sits around $355,000, though that figure has swung wildly over the past few hours.
The fake tweet had a story ready to go
Whoever got in did their homework. The post was dressed up to look like the coin was part of the celebrations for Pokémon’s 30th anniversary, which is exactly the kind of detail that makes a scam land. A milestone year. A commemorative something. Sure, why not.
Plenty of fans weren’t buying it. They figured Pokémon would never create or promote cryptocurrency and clocked the account as compromised almost immediately. Others got curious about the themed memecoin anyway, and curiosity is all a scam like this needs.
Eight million followers is the actual weapon
The Pokémon account has eight million followers. Even if most of them scrolled past, the reach was global and instant, and the transaction volume tells you how many people didn’t scroll past.
Here’s the part that should worry you more than the tweet itself. The AI disclaimer next to the coin’s name indicates it was launched by the official Pokémon account. It wasn’t. Fans should be very aware that this is not the case, because that disclaimer is doing the scammers’ work for them long after the post came down.
Pokémon’s response is already gone
In a now-deleted post, Pokémon confirmed the account was hacked and said it would be looking into how this could’ve happened. Both that response and the original hacker post have been saved and shared by X users, which is the modern version of a paper trail.
This isn’t happening in isolation. Official entertainment social media accounts have been targeted by hackers more and more in recent months, and it’s hard not to draw parallels with the recent Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks, which were also used to promote a cryptocurrency.
The activities of the group known as Cyberleek may have emboldened more hackers to go after prestigious companies with crypto schemes. Thirty years of Pikachu goodwill, converted into $3 million of trading volume, in half an hour.
