Robinhood CEO account hacked to promote VLAD memecoin
Fraudsters promoting memecoins hacked the X account of Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev. They used his profile to advertise a token called VLAD.
According to The Block, the post appeared on Thursday evening. It claimed that Robinhood was launching Vladhood, a memecoin with the ticker VLAD, as the official mascot of the company’s blockchain.
The post also stated that the token would be listed in the Robinhood app and included a smart contract address beginning with 0x92d. However, no similar announcement appeared on the official Robinhood or Robinhood Crypto accounts.
Token flagged as a potential scam
The Robinhood Chain blockchain explorer warns that VLAD may be a scam token. About 1,868 transactions have been recorded since its launch.
The contract was created by a user through infrastructure called PonsLaunchFactory. The post was later removed from Tenev’s account.
Robinhood Chain launched on July 1 and quickly became a popular venue for memecoin trading, including the Cashcat token. According to recent data, the network processes around 6 million transactions per day.
Cumulative trading volume on decentralized exchanges within the network has approached $9 billion. Entropy Advisors estimates that a significant share of this activity is linked to high-risk memecoins.
Robinhood confirms the hack
Tenev previously said that Robinhood Chain was being developed primarily as infrastructure for tokenized real-world assets, although the network also works well for memecoins.
Robinhood Chain is an Ethereum Layer 2 network built on the Arbitrum Orbit technology stack.
Robinhood later confirmed that Tenev’s account had been compromised. The company said it was working with X to restore access and that the fraudulent post had already been removed.
Celebrities become bait for investors
Tenev’s account is far from the first high-profile profile to be hacked for the promotion of a questionable token. In July 2024, attackers gained access to singer Doja Cat’s account and posted advertisements for the DOJA memecoin. In November of the same year, rapper Wiz Khalifa’s account was used to promote WIZ, a Solana-based token that quickly lost most of its value. In December, hackers used Drake’s account to advertise the ANITA memecoin, which generated more than $5 million in trading volume.
A similar attack targeted actress Sydney Sweeney. After taking control of her account, scammers began promoting the SWEENEY token, whose trading volume reached approximately $10 million. In 2025, attackers also gained access to the Instagram accounts of Adele, rapper Future, and Michael Jackson to attract buyers to another memecoin.
As a reminder, U.S. prosecutors are seeking to seize $25 million in cryptocurrency linked to fraudulent schemes.
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