Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev Hacked, Exploiter Makes $1.2 Million Promoting Fake Token

Hackers took over the X account of Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev on Thursday. They used it to push a new crypto coin, Vladhood (VLAD), that has already been flagged as a likely scam.

The fake post called VLAD the official mascot of Robinhood Chain. It even said the coin would be listed in the Robinhood app.

Inside the Robinhood CEO X Account Hack

Robinhood’s own accounts stayed silent. So did Robinhood Crypto. That was the first clue the post was fake.

The message started with a question. Does Robinhood love memes? It answered yes, then shared the coin’s address and signed off, “Welcome to the Hood.”

The post has since been deleted.

A blockchain tracker for Robinhood Chain marks the coin as a likely scam. The token holds no real money. It has changed hands about 1,868 times since launch.

According to on-chain monitoring by MLM, the attacker generated around 650 ETH in proceeds from the VLAD token, worth approximately $1.2 million to $1.3 million.

Scams like this keep hitting the network. Reports of rug pulls have multiplied. The trick is not new. A fake coin named after Coinbase boss Brian Armstrong crashed this month, a lesson about trusting posts from executive accounts.

Meme Coins Keep Testing Robinhood Chain

Robinhood Chain went live on July 1. It is a new blockchain that Robinhood built on Ethereum. The company wants it to power tokenized stocks and other real-world assets.

But memecoins took over fast. The network now handles millions of trades a day. Risky meme coins drive most of it, and recently pushed it to record trading volume. Total trading has topped roughly $9 billion, according to Entropy Advisors.

One coin, the Cash Cat meme coin, has led the pack. Some experts worry this meme coin trading boom could hurt Robinhood’s bigger plans for tokenized stocks.

Tenev has welcomed the fun. He once posted that the chain “works great for memes too.” Now that same hype has been turned against him.

While we’re building robinhood chain to be the best chain for RWA … it works great for memes too