Memecoin creators jump on WWE icon Hulk Hogan's death to launch rugpulls

A day after wrestling icon Hulk Hogan’s death, a wave of new meme coins flooded the market, but the largest token quickly proved to be a scam.

Hogan, whose real name was Terry Bollea, passed away yesterday, setting off activity in the meme coin space. Almost immediately, a “Hulk Hogan Tribute” token appeared on decentralized exchanges, drawing eager traders hoping to honor the late star. 

Most notable among these was Hulk/SOL, that jumped to $7 million market cap. Despite early warnings from the community that the token was unsafe and clear signs of a botted chart, investors continued to pour in.

Eventually, the coin crashed in a single candle. At press time, the market cap of this scam coin is only $5.7k with $7.1k left in the liquidity pool. It has crashed over 99.7% in the last 24 hours.

Watchdogs on social platforms and in the crypto community quickly clocked HULK as a scam. Yet within hours, its price ballooned, driven by automated bot activity. 

Meme coins ride Hulk Hogan’s iconic status

Beyond the tribute token, several NFT collections appeared to honor Hogan. Traders minted digital art showing the wrestler in classic poses, and other meme coins used his name to attract buyers. But compared to the tribute coin’s rapid rise and fall, none of these other assets drew significant trading volumes or attention.

This is not the first time the Hogan brand has been associated with questionable crypto projects. 

Last year, Hogan’s official X account was hijacked to push a “Hulkamania” token in a similar scheme. Hogan’s team regained control and removed the promotional posts, but the token itself ended in a rug pull. 

When they saw news of his passing yesterday, some traders revived the HULK token from that episode for one last activity boost.

Charting the token’s price reveals a sharp initial jump followed by a steady decline. Ironically, last year’s rug pull proved to be more organic than the recent launches in his name. 

Nevertheless, the revived token never reached more than one-seventh of the tribute coin’s peak, and its decline included several “dead cat” bounces, brief recoveries that allowed a few traders to cash out.

Former UFC star Ben Askren promotes crypto scam after nearly dying

Meme coin scams seem to be heating up once again. In a similar case, former UFC celebrity Ben Askren ended up promoting a scam coin on his X account this week.

Since late May, former mixed martial artist and ex-Olympian Ben Askren has been fighting severe pneumonia that led to a double lung transplant earlier this month. 

Doctors spent weeks caring for him in the hospital, and Askren later said he has no memory of the entire month of June and even felt like he was dead four times. His condition was so serious that some fans feared he might not survive.

On Tuesday, Askren finally left the hospital after almost 60 days of treatment. Within 24 hours, his X account urged followers to buy “FUNKY,” a new Solana-based meme coin named after his nickname in wrestling and MMA.

Reports said the token was a part of a paid promotion by serial rugpull launcher Sahil Arora, with a track record of similar schemes.

The meme coin saw little real trading before its deployer sold the entire supply in one swift move. That sale crashed FUNKY’s price to zero, with the creator managing to cash out merely $1,200, considered to be chump change by crypto bros. This incident joins the list of the worst rugpulls in history, in terms of how little damage it did.

Ben was hacked. You have to be a real POS to take advantage of a dude who almost died multiple times in the last 60 days.

— Slim Pick’em💰 (@Slim_Pickem) July 23, 2025

Most believe Askren’s account was hacked or used without his full consent. His team has not confirmed if the post was genuine or the result of a breach. 

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