A crypto token on Solana was advertised on Visa’s official Facebook account on Jan 27, 2025, while another Solana-based meme coin FAFO Barron shot up over 250% in a short span of a few hours after President Donald Trump posted a picture.
Visa’s Facebook compromised in crypto scam
On Jan. 27, hackers compromised Visa’s official Facebook page in a cyberattack and used it to promote a suspicious Solana-based token trading under the ticker $VISA. The price of the token surged before collapsing, a signature of a rug-pull scam.
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A rug-pull refers to a scam in which developers of a token suddenly sell their holdings, causing the token’s price to collapse. It shows ancincreasing trend of corporate social media accounts being commandeered to promote scam crypto schemes.
Soon all the news outlets will be talking about $VISA LMAO https://t.co/uJsHlKRwAG
— @Muscle💪👻 (@RichCashNFT) January 27, 2025
VISA/SOL trading chart on GMGN.AI (5-min intervals) showing a rapid price surge followed by a correction and subsequent stabilization. Source: crypto.news
Trump pushes FAFO BARRON’s price up:
On Jan. 27, President Donald Trump posted a picture of himself with a FAFO meme coin on his social media platform, Truth Social, which bumped up the Solana-based meme coin’s price by 250% in four hours.
The meme coin was created on the Pump.fun, Solana’s meme coin launching platform, and was named after Barron, the President’s youngest son. The token saw a sharp rise in its market capitalization and reached over $148K in those hours, as per CoinMarketCap.
FAFO/SOL trading chart on Raydium (15-min intervals), showing a price rebound with notable market volatility on January 27, 2025. Source: crypto.news
While the President’s promotion has people interested in FAFO, the meme coin’s price started plummeting, and at the time of writing, it is trading at $0.00004161. This is a sharp decline of 28% in just one hour. This comes after another crypto named ‘Barron’ was launched on Solana on Jan. 20, the day President Trump took office as the 47th President of the United States. However, the Barron token soon pulled $1 million in the rug.
Solana: a top choice for rug pull scams
Solana (SOL), which has been accredited as one of the top choices for AI agents, but also houses Pump.fun, which allows anyone to create a meme coin, often leading to a rug pull.
Pump.fun has faced criticism for being exploited by bad actors to launch scam tokens, leading to investor losses. This is not an independent experience. Reports indicate that only 0.4% of Pump.fun’s 14 million members earned over $10K in profit, leaving the majority with losses. On Jan. 15, Burwick Law announced that they are moving ahead with litigation against Pump.fun, accusing it of exploiting investors through what founder Max Burwick describes as an “evolution of multi-level marketing scams”.
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