Metallica‘s social media accounts have apparently been hacked by crypto scammers.
Fans spotted the band tweeting about a Solana-based cryptocurrency under the ticker ‘METAL’ yesterday (June 26).
Though the posts have now been deleted, screenshots (via Cointelegraph) show the tweets reading as follows: “Get ready for the takeover. Tap into $METAL, a dynamic new token on the Solana blockchain poised to revolutionize how you experience events and shop online. In collaboration with @Ticketmaster.”
The scammer then posted details about a scheme where users could exchange their METAL tokens for Metallica gig tickets and exclusive merch, including an Xbox game console supposedly signed by Metallica themselves.
The posts have since been taken down; whilst Metallica have not made any official statement, they did retweet cryptocurrenty transfer company MoonPay’s statement, with their president Keith Grossman writing: “MoonPay does NOT support METAL.”
According to Dexscreener data, the token reached a peak of $3.37million (£2.6million) around 20 minutes after it was launched; it dropped down to $90k (£71k) roughly three hours later.
Frontman James Hetfield recently commented on whether the band will ever write another song in theri ‘Unforgiven’ series.
In 1991, the metal icons released ‘The Unforgiven’ as the second single from their acclaimed self-titled album. Six years later, ‘The Unforgiven II’ arrived as part of the ‘Reload’ album. In 2008, the band dropped the last entry in the ‘Unforgiven’ saga to date with ‘The Unforgiven III’ as part of ‘Death Magnetic’.
When asked if the ‘Unforgiven’ saga is complete on The Metallica Report podcast, Hetfield replied: “I’m not dead! I’m not dead yet, so it’s not finished.”
NME also spoke with the band last year, where drummer Lars Ulrich opened up about the impact of Stranger Things on their fanbase. The show used ‘Master of Puppets’ during a key scene in the show’s season 4 finale.
“We see a lot of 13 to 14-year-olds coming for the first time,” said Ulrich. “There’s always been a coming-of-age element to our shows, and just look at the Stranger Things phenomena of last summer. “That came out of nowhere and all of a sudden introduced Metallica to a whole other set of younger people.”