Latest news with #DEXScreener
Yahoo
18-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Coinbase Embroiled in Alleged Frontrunning Controversy With ‘Base Is for Everyone' Token
Token debuts remain a contentious issue, often criticized for their poor execution that allows individuals, supposedly armed with insider information about impending launches, to profit through front-running campaigns. The latest example is the "Base is for everyone" token announced by Coinbase's Ethereum Layer 2 solution Base on Wednesday. Three crypto wallets bought tokens ahead of the official announcement on X, resulting in significant profits, according to blockchain sleuth Lookonchain. At around 19:30 UTC on Wednesday, Base announced the debut of its token minted via Zora, an on-chain social network, empowering creativity by turning any content posted on its network into tradable coins. The token quickly rose to a market capitalization of over $15 million, bringing significant gains to at least three crypto addresses that acquired coins before the official announcement on X. "3 wallets bought a large amount of "Base is for everyone" before @base posted and sold them, making a profit of ~$666K," Lookonchain said on X. The wallet address 0x0992 invested 1.5 ether (ETH), to purchase 256.39 million units of the token at 12:30 PM UTC and sold the entire coin stash for 108 ETH following the official announcement, pocketing a profit of $168,000 in just over an hour. Wallet address 0x5D9D invested 1 ETH ($1,580) and walked away with $266,000 profit, and another address, labelled 0xBD31, made $231,800. The token's market capitalization tanked to less than $2 million after that as Base announced another coin for its FarCon poster, sucking out liquidity from the Base is for Everyone token and leaving entrants in the latter with a large loss. However, valuations have recovered since then, with the market capitalization of Base is for everyone topping the $18 mark as of writing, per data source DEX Screener. Base creator Jesse greenlighted the token, saying, "The goal is to 'normalize putting all content on-chain." Coinbase clarified that the Base is for everyone coin is not the official cryptocurrency of Base and the layer 2 did not directly sell these. 'Base posted on Zora, which automatically tokenizes content,' Coinbase's spokesperson told CoinDesk. The legal disclaimer on Zora suggested the same, with Base also clarifying its position on X, saying, it shall never sell these tokens. 'To be clear, Base will never sell these tokens, and these are not official network tokens for Base, Coinbase, or any other related product. The content we share is creative, and we're going to keep bringing culture on-chain,' Base said. The rapid boom-bust cycles in these smaller tokens often create a net negative wealth effect, allowing a select few to profit significantly while the majority face losses. This often leads to liquidity drain from the broader digital assets market. The larger the boom-and-bust cycles associated with these coins, the stronger the negative wealth effect. For instance, this year's debut of LIBRA and TRUMP tokens destroyed millions in investor wealth, marking a major price top in bitcoin and the broader crypto in to access your portfolio
The Independent
27-01-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
Dean Norris' X account hacked by scammers selling meme coin named ‘Dean'
Breaking Bad star Dean Norris says his X account was hacked as part of an elaborate scam to promote a meme coin – a crypto currency often inspired by internet trends – called '$DEAN'. Norris, 61, who played Hank Schrader in the 16-time Emmy Award-winning drama, spoke out after the actor said he was alerted the social media swindle by friends. 'I've decided to launch my own crypto currency called $DEAN,' a post from fraudsters posted to Norris' X account read along with an external link. The $DEAN token reached a market cap as high as $8.35 million on Saturday, according to data from DEX Screener. On Monday morning, more than 24 hours after a video posted by Norris confirming he was hacked, $DEAN token's market cap plummeted to $51,000. After X users began querying whether the posts were legitimate, the hackers uploaded a seemingly photoshopped photograph of Norris holding a notepad with the handwritten note '$DEAN' and the meme coin's launch date: January 25, 2025. In a harrowing twist, the hackers are believed to have purchased a five-second message from Norris' Cameo, a video sharing platform that provides bespoke, paid-for messages from a well-known person. In the clip, Norris says, 'hey it's me Dean… It's January 25th, I'm declaring it's real,' unintendedly appearing to confirm the validity of the cryptocurrency venture. When followers asked Norris's X account for more proof, the fraudsters shared the video of Norris to his feed. Other posts shared AI-generated photographs of Norris smiling when overlaid with '$DEAN friends' and frowning with the words 'everybody else'. After appearing to be locked out of his X account, late on Saturday, Norris took to Instagram to calmly alert his two-million followers that his account had been hacked, and the scammers were 'yapping about some crypto currency' venture. At approximately 11pm on Saturday evening, Norris appeared to have regained access to his X account after logging a complaint with the social media platform. 'I WAS HACKED!!! ALL A FAKE SCAM!!,' he wrote. In a video posted four minutes later, Norris said: 'Hey, this is Dean Norris – actually – and that whole crazy crypto s**t was a complete fake scam. I was hacked and I just got it back… whatever the f**k that is just ignore it.' Norris added that he infrequently uses X, and said that he doesn't have a Telegram account. He also called out people on Reddit that accused him of launching a crypto token and using it to 'pump and dump' – a practice which sees criminals urge investors to buy shares to inflate its price before selling their own shares – the tokens for a profit. 'THANKS A**HOLES ON REDDIT WHO CALLED ME ALL SORTS OF S**T FOR SOMETHING I DIDN'T DO. GO F**K YOURSELVES.' It's not the first time Norris has been hacked on the social media platform. In September, his account tweeted about another scam meme coin, $SHRADER. 'I was hacked. Nothing too bad just send fake 'Please retweet this'. Probably about crypto or something,' he wrote on X on September 26. 'Anyway sorry to all who may have gotten a fake direct message from me asking for a retweet.'
