The meme coin named after recording artist Doja Cat surged in value on Monday as posts on her X account urged her 5.6 million followers to buy it.
However, the eloquent (and sometimes profane) supporting comments came from hackers who had taken over the account, the singer and rapper said shortly afterward via Instagram. The value of the coin quickly sank to the crypto equivalent of penny stocks, where it remained on Tuesday.
The roughly 1 billion Doja coins had a total market value of $13,700 as of Tuesday afternoon, or less than $0.000014 each.
Like other cryptocurrencies, meme coins (virtual currencies based on a meme or a parody of one) have no intrinsic value, so their value depends entirely on what people are willing to pay for them at the time. The most popular meme coin, Dogecoin, has a market cap of over $15 billion; dozens of meme coins have attracted tens of millions of dollars in investment each.
For every meme coin that’s successful today, there are hundreds that are worth nothing or next to nothing. However, several celebrities have attempted to cash in on the phenomenon, including rapper Iggy Azalea, whose recently launched Mother coin had a market cap of more than $200 million on June 8. By Tuesday, Mother’s price had fallen roughly 85% from its June peak.
Beyond market volatility, meme coins based on celebrities with large social media followings have been the target of numerous hacks such as the one on Monday on Doja Cat's account on X (formerly Twitter).
The hackers’ goal is to persuade enough people to jump on the coin’s bandwagon and drive up its value, at which point investors could sell their holdings at a profit — at least until the market reacts and the value drops again. “Buy $DOJA or else,” read one post on Doja Cat’s X account, illustrated with an image of the artist in a chain letter brandishing a sword. Another directed an epithet at Azalea and then said, “and buy $DOJA.”
The posts, which have since been deleted, coincided with a flurry of Doja transactions (about 15,000) that sent the coin’s selling price soaring, according to GeckoTerminal.com. Within an hour and a half, however, the gains had all but evaporated in a wave of selling.
Representatives for Doja Cat did not immediately respond Tuesday to a request for comment.
