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Ruholamin Haqshanas
Author
Ruholamin Haqshanas
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Scammers have launched a fraudulent crypto by impersonating Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, exploiting the growing hype around celebrity-backed meme coins.
The fake token, called the “Official” Saudi Arabia meme coin (KSA), was introduced in a now-deleted post on Feb. 17 through an X account posing as the crown prince.
The token quickly raised suspicions, as there was no official government announcement or credible information about its tokenomics or real-world utility.
Shortly after the scam coin’s debut, the actual owners of the X account, the Saudi Law Conference, revealed that their account had been hijacked.
In a LinkedIn post on Feb. 17, the conference organizers confirmed the hack and stated that any content posted by the compromised account did not reflect their views or official stance.
The launch of this scam token follows a similar pattern seen in the recent controversy surrounding the Libra (LIBRA) token, which was linked to Argentine President Javier Milei.
That project collapsed spectacularly after insiders cashed out $107 million, causing the token’s value to plummet by over 94%.
As reported, blockchain analytics firm Bubblemaps has presented on-chain evidence suggesting that the team behind the Libra meme coin is the same group responsible for launching Melania (MELANIA).
Bubblemaps’ investigation claimed that 0xcEA was heavily involved in sniping the Melania token launch on Jan. 19, generating $2.4 million in profits.
These funds were swiftly moved to another wallet on Avalanche, using a series of obfuscated transactions across multiple Solana wallets.
Analysts argue that this pattern strongly suggests that the Melania team, or someone closely associated with them, manipulated their own token launch for insider profit.
Weeks later, the same wallet was found to have funded the creation of the LIBRA token.
Meme Coins Were the Most Popular Crypto Narrative in 2024: CoinGecko
Meme coins dominated the crypto landscape in 2024, capturing nearly a third of investor interest, according to a CoinGecko report.
The study, which analyzed site traffic from January 1 to December 21, revealed that 31% of crypto-related searches centered around these highly speculative tokens.
Among the various trends, the “main meme coin narrative” alone accounted for 15% of interest, a notable increase of over six percentage points from 2023.
Solana-based meme coins followed closely as the fourth-largest category, with an 8% share of interest.
Additionally, other meme coin-related trends, such as those tied to Coinbase’s Base blockchain and AI-themed meme coins, ranked among the top narratives, further solidifying the sector’s prominence.
