For roughly half an hour on Aug., Pokémon’s official X account stopped talking about Pokémon altogether. Instead, it was pushing a memecoin named $POKEMON.
That was the entire play — and it made real money. Cryptocurrency exchange sites show more than $3 million in $POKEMON transactions since the token went live. Market cap currently hovers near $355,000, a number that has bounced around dramatically over the last few hours.
The fake tweet had a story ready to go
Whoever pulled this off came prepared. The post framed the coin as part of the festivities around Pokémon’s 30th anniversary — precisely the sort of touch that makes a scam believable. A milestone year. A commemorative something. Sure, why not.
A lot of fans saw straight through it, reasoning that Pokémon would never launch or endorse a cryptocurrency, and flagging the account as compromised within moments. But others were intrigued enough by a themed memecoin to take a look, and curiosity is the only ingredient a scheme like this requires.
Eight million followers is the actual weapon
Eight million people follow the Pokémon account. Even assuming the majority just kept scrolling, the exposure was worldwide and immediate — and the transaction volume shows exactly how many didn’t scroll past.
Now for the detail that deserves more concern than the tweet did. The AI disclaimer displayed beside the coin’s name indicates the token was launched by the official Pokémon account. It wasn’t. Fans should be very aware that this is not the case, because that disclaimer keeps doing the scammers’ job well after the post was taken down.
Pokémon’s response is already gone
Pokémon acknowledged the breach in a post that has since been deleted, saying it would look into how this could’ve happened. X users archived and circulated both that statement and the hacker’s original post — the modern equivalent of a paper trail.
The incident isn’t a one-off. Hackers have increasingly gone after official entertainment social media accounts in recent months, and the echoes of the recent Grand Theft Auto 6 leaks — likewise weaponized to promote a cryptocurrency — are hard to ignore.
Activity from the group known as Cyberleek may have encouraged additional hackers to target prestigious companies with crypto schemes. Thirty years of Pikachu goodwill, converted into $3 million of trading volume, in half an hour.