The introduction of a token on the Solana blockchain, purportedly by American star Caitlyn Jenner, has puzzled analysts of the cryptocurrency market. Jenner announced late on Sunday that she had used the Solana token deployer Pump Fun to issue the JENNER token in a post on her X account. Because famous profiles on the social media site have been compromised in the past to fraudulently promote coins or crypto protocols, market players promptly discounted it as a possible hack.
Usually, such account compromises are caught early and shut down immediately by X’s security teams. But Jenner’s account continued to advertise the token hours after the initial launch.
“Nothing has been hacked,” a post read. “We will be solely focused on $Jenner and expect to hit $50m market cap in the first 24 hours,” another said.
Given that a number of famous Americans had previously faced charges from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for even endorsing tokens, market watchers probably saw the token with suspicion. A video that seemed to show the celebrity discussing the token was posted on Jenner’s account approximately six hours after it was issued. The tweet indicated that the token had registered trading volumes of over $113 million in just four hours and explicitly stated that it was not a “deep fake.”
“This is real. Get involved,” Jenner said in the purported video. “My new crypto coin.”
Jenner’s manager Sophia Hutchins was seen in a another video post confirming that the coin was genuine and that she was in charge of “managing the crypto project.”That video was written off by some X users as a deep fake. According to The Block, Jenner’s Instagram account also featured postings endorsing the token. As of 10:48 UTC, CoinDesk could not find any evidence of these posts on Jenner’s account, suggesting that they had been removed. In the meantime, just 4% of participants in the Polymarket prediction platform’s “Was Caitlyn Jenner hacked?” market chose to vote “Yes.” As of early in the European afternoon, the market had drawn wagers totaling more than $1.2 million.