Scammers use Myanmar PM’s X account to push meme token scheme
Myanmar leaders account hacked
On Saturday, hackers breached the official X account of Myanmar’s State Administration Council Chairman and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Min Aung Hlaing. The compromised account was used to promote several fake meme coins, falsely branding them as the "national cryptocurrency of the Republic of Myanmar."
Using the hacked account of Myanmar’s leader, the attackers announced the supposed government launch of the country's first national cryptocurrency and invited users to participate in this "historic initiative."
"Today, we are launching BIRMAS—an experiment designed to show how something as simple as a meme can unite people, support national development, and bring the Republic of the Union of Myanmar onto the global stage," one of the posts stated.
Although witnesses claim the post was deleted within 10 minutes of publication, this was enough time for several fake meme tokens to emerge, each claiming to be Myanmar’s official cryptocurrency.
According to Cryptopolitan, at least one of them—MYANMAR—collapsed by 95% almost immediately after launch.
Part of a global trend
The launch of fake Myanmar tokens is part of a broader trend of using official social media accounts to promote scam coins. Just two weeks ago, hackers took over the X account of former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad and used it to sell a fraudulent token, MALAYSIA, making $1.7 million.
In late January, an official "Cuba token" was launched in the same manner. A cloned account of the Bermuda Prime Minister was used to promote a fake Bermuda token, while Argentina’s President was involved in the promotion of the meme coin LIBRA, which at its peak reached a market capitalization of $4.6 billion.
As we wrote, LIBRA creator accuses Javier Milei of manipulations and asks what to do with $100M raised from the launch
