By Sander Lutz
4 min read
Illustration by Mitchell Preffer for Decrypt
This week saw crypto degeneracy spread its tendrils far and wide—from the upper echelons of corporate America, to the center of the presidential election.
On Wednesday, the world’s largest restaurant chain, McDonald’s, found its social media operation infiltrated by an unwelcome—and exceptionally merry—group of crypto bandits, who used the company’s Instagram account to pump, and soon thereafter dump, a Grimace-themed meme coin.
It appears the hackers gained access to the social media accounts of a senior McDonald’s marketing director, and then made it appear that the $207 billion, publicly traded company was “experimenting” with a Solana meme coin launched on Pump.fun. In short order, the hackers then rugged the token, proudly flaunting their booty haul of roughly $700,000 to the world.
Crypto Twitter, of course, couldn’t get enough of the saga, particularly thanks to the distinctive place of McDonald’s in crypto meme lore.
As goofy as the attack was, however, one of the biggest companies in the world did have its primary social media page promoting a scam crypto token for well over an hour. Some influencers attempted to prod the famously settlement-averse corporation (perhaps jokingly, perhaps not) about potential liability.
In the political realm, the cryptoverse got yet another infusion of U.S. presidential election-related excitement on Friday, when pro-crypto candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. suspended his campaign and endorsed former president Donald Trump, who has aggressively courted the industry himself this summer.
Some Crypto Twitter standbys speculated whether Kennedy might advocate for crypto from within the White House should Trump win a second term.
Crypto advocates appeared particularly excited by the news given a perceived lack of support of digital assets across the aisle. On Monday, as the Democratic National Convention kicked off in Chicago, Crypto Twitter stewed when it was revealed that the party’s platform made no reference to crypto policy.
But this week, a senior advisor to Kamala Harris made a point to emphasize that the Democratic nominee will support policies to foster the cryptocurrency industry, should she win the presidency come November.
Though certainly a less prominent breed on Crypto Twitter, supporters of the Vice President jumped on the report as validation that there are alternatives to Trump, even for diehard crypto advocates.
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