Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev’s X account has been hacked to advertise a pretend company-linked memecoin that briefly reached a market capitalization of about $10 million.
Abstract
- Hackers used Vlad Tenev’s X account to advertise the pretend Vladhood memecoin.
- Vladhood briefly reached a $10 million market cap earlier than Robinhood confirmed the breach.
- The assault follows comparable memecoin scams focusing on CZ, BNB Chain and Yi He.
Robinhood confirmed the breach by its official X account, telling customers that Tenev’s profile had been compromised and that the corporate was working with X to revive entry. The brokerage added that the unauthorized publish had been eliminated.
Posted at about 17:24 UTC on July 23, the message launched Vladhood below the ticker VLAD and described it because the “official Robinhood Chain mascot.” The hackers additionally claimed that Robinhood would listing the token on its buying and selling app.
In search of to attach the token with Robinhood’s enterprise plans, the deleted publish claimed Vladhood would deliver consideration to Robinhood Chain in the course of the third and fourth quarters. Neither Robinhood’s predominant X account nor the corporate’s crypto account printed an identical announcement.
The publish included a contract handle starting with 0x92d, directing Tenev’s followers to a token deployed solely minutes earlier by a contract named PonsLaunchFactory. Robinhood Chain’s block explorer subsequently connected a “potential scam” warning to the asset after recording greater than 1,800 transactions.
Vladhood surges earlier than Robinhood confirms the hack
Buying and selling exercise accelerated quickly after the contract appeared on Tenev’s profile, pushing Vladhood’s market capitalization to roughly $10 million at its peak. The token later fell under $5 million after Robinhood confirmed the breach and the promotional message disappeared.
Onchain knowledge reveals that wallets recognized as insiders realized greater than $1 million in earnings in the course of the speedy worth enhance. At press time, the pockets house owners had not been recognized, and there was no proof linking them on to the compromise of Tenev’s account.
Regardless of Robinhood’s warning, Vladhood continued buying and selling after the publish was deleted, exhibiting how onchain tokens can stay accessible even when the social-media promotion behind them has been discredited. Robinhood had not introduced any plan to listing Vladhood or acknowledge it because the chain’s mascot on the time of reporting.
The episode follows a way that Binance co-founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao warned merchants about in October 2025. With memecoin exercise growing on the time, Zhao wrote that hackers have been focusing on social-media profiles as a result of such accounts usually had weaker safeguards than crypto platforms.
“With the rise of meme coins, hackers are targeting social media accounts (as they usually have lower security measures) to post CAs [contract addresses].”
Zhao additionally cautioned customers that official accounts didn’t endorse specific memecoins, urging merchants to deal with sudden contract-address posts with suspicion. His warning adopted the compromise of BNB Chain’s X account, which attackers used to advertise a pretend BNB-themed token introduced as a part of an airdrop.
An identical scheme focused Binance co-CEO Yi He in December 2025. Hackers seized an unused WeChat account related to her outdated telephone quantity and used it to advertise MUBARA, often known as Mubarakah, shortly after she joined Richard Teng in Binance’s twin management construction.
Notably, posts from Yi He’s compromised profile inspired contacts to purchase the token, creating sufficient demand for a coordinated pump-and-dump. Zhao confirmed the breach and urged merchants to disregard the messages, whereas reported onchain estimates positioned the attackers’ revenue at about $55,000.
Robinhood Chain retains attracting speculative buying and selling
Tenev’s account was compromised as Robinhood Chain recorded a pointy enhance in exercise following its July 1 mainnet launch. Constructed as an Ethereum layer-2 community utilizing Arbitrum know-how, the chain was launched to help tokenized property, decentralized finance and round the clock buying and selling.
Memecoins, nevertheless, provided a lot of its early decentralized change exercise. Entropy Advisors estimated that Robinhood Chain had processed about $9 billion in cumulative DEX quantity by July 23, with high-risk memecoin buying and selling answerable for a lot of that quantity.
CashCat turned one of many community’s first main tokens, reaching a market capitalization of about $150 million in the course of the chain’s opening weeks. Fortune reported that Robinhood Chain’s each day buying and selling quantity rose from barely above $200,000 on July 1 to greater than $500 million 9 days later, pushed largely by speculative tokens relatively than real-world property.
Though Robinhood designed the community round tokenized finance, Tenev beforehand acknowledged its early memecoin exercise. Fortune quoted him as saying that whereas the corporate was constructing Robinhood Chain for real-world property, the community additionally “works great for memes.”
Income has risen alongside the buying and selling surge. DeFiLlama knowledge confirmed that Robinhood Chain generated about $1.1 million in income over seven days and $2.11 million since launch, inserting it among the many highest-earning chains in the course of the measured interval.
DeFiLlama additionally recorded a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in bridged worth and substantial each day DEX quantity on the community. These figures clarify why a false endorsement tied to Tenev and Robinhood Chain might entice merchants inside minutes, whereas Robinhood’s affirmation established that Vladhood had no licensed connection to the corporate.
