Malicious actors use more and more memecoins to scam crypto enthusiasts.
Crypto detectives have noticed a significant surge in the creation of shady memecoins in the past couple of months.
In particular, one wallet address, discovered by blockchain investigator ZachXBT, appears to be at the center of it all, allegedly launching 114 memecoin scams during 45 days.
Did you know?
Want to get smarter & wealthier with crypto?
Subscribe - We publish new crypto explainer videos every week!
What is Olympus DAO? (OHM Crypto Animated Explainer)
On April 26th, ZachXBT disclosed that the wallet address in question, 0x739c58807B99Cb274f6FD96B10194202b8EEfB47, funnels the stolen funds to the same deposit address each time.
The detective admitted that there might be even more scams linked to this address, as the estimation was based on the funds sent to the deposit address.
Calculating the exact amount scammed by this wallet is challenging, given that the alleged malicious actor employs multiple wallets to split the funds. Memecoins are cryptocurrency tokens typically associated with internet memes or jokes, often lacking any serious utility or potential use cases.
Another Twitter user, Lucrafund, contributed to the investigation by revealing a screenshot that shows the alleged scammer transferring some of the stolen funds to a Coinbase address.
When asked why this activity has not been flagged by Coinbase, ZachXBT speculated that it could be due to the funds being sent in smaller amounts at a time, making detection difficult.
On April 27th, CoinGurruu tweeted about another wallet address, 0xCc16D5E53C1890B2802d5441d23639CAc6cd646F, allegedly involved in launching 2-5 memecoin scams daily for nearly two years. The user warned others to label this address on Etherscan to avoid falling victim to these scams.
The crypto community must remain vigilant against the increasing number of memecoin scams as anonymous scammers continue to exploit unsuspecting investors.
On April 20th, the Ethereum network experienced a multi-month high in gas fees amid the growing memecoin craze.
