Hulk Hogan’s Death Sparks Frenzy of Meme Coins and Scams

Hulk Hogan, professional wrestling legend, passed away yesterday, prompting a swarm of new meme coins and NFTs. Many of these HULK tokens quickly trended, but the largest coin proved to be a rug pull scam.

Last year, Hogan’s X (formerly Twitter) account was reportedly hacked to promote a fake meme coin. Since yesterday, this defunct token has also seen heightened activity.

Scammers Take Advantage of Hulk Hogan’s Popularity

The meme coin sector will take any opportunity to launch a hot new token, and legendary wrestler Hulk Hogan’s death is certainly no exception.

Yesterday, the famous figure passed away, prompting the immediate appearance of a “Hulk Hogan Tribute” token. Watchdogs quickly clocked HULK as a scam, but it nonetheless reached a $7 million market cap before flatlining.

HULK (Hulk Hogan Tribute) Market Cap. Source: HULK (Hulk Hogan Tribute) Market Cap.

As the immediate and complete market collapse suggests, Hulk Hogan Tribute was a classic rug pull scam. On social media, plenty of users openly admitted to running bot campaigns to promote HULK, aiming to pump the token as high as possible.

Real-life tragedies frequently become fodder for these scams, so this all seems pretty straightforward.

However, this scam is not the only Web3 asset with Hulk Hogan’s branding to take off today. For example, traders also released NFT collections in his honor, and a variety of meme coins are currently live in the DEX ecosystem.

None, however, took off like Hulk Hogan Tribute and its social media bot campaigns.

Interestingly, Hogan’s own X account was hacked last year to promote a scam token. Hogan’s team quickly regained control and deleted the posts, and the “Hulkamania” HULK token underwent a similar rug pull.

Today, however, traders resurrected the token, enjoying one last boost of activity after the wrestler’s death.

HULK (Hulkamania) Market Cap. Source: HULK (Hulkamania) Market Cap.

As the chart shows, this HULK token also collapsed, but its activity is very different from the rug pull scam. Ironically, last year’s rug pull proved significantly more honest than an asset that launched less than 24 hours ago.

Sure, it only reached one-seventh of the market cap, but its slower decline and dead cat bounces left several opportunities for profit-taking.

On several occasions, retail investors have continued trading meme coins even after the initial project turned out to be fraudulent. Evidently, Hulk Hogan’s death also prompted this activity in addition to outright rug pull scams.

There’s a possible lesson here regarding the meme coin market. It can be difficult or impossible to warn investors about manufactured hype bubbles, but authentic community enthusiasm does exist.