Truth Terminal Founder’s X Account Hijacked in $25 Million Crypto Scam

Andy Ayrey, the founder of the Truth Terminal platform, fell victim to a hacking attack during which his account on the social network X was exploited to promote a fraudulent token. The attacker posted a contract address for a new token with the ticker IB on Ayrey’s profile to lure investors and inflate the asset’s market value.

The hacker’s account received 12.5% of the total token supply, triggering a sudden surge in capitalization to $25 million. However, after profiting over $600,000 from the scheme, the perpetrator initiated a massive sell-off, causing the token’s value to plummet by 98% and reducing its capitalization to $500,000.

In the aftermath, community members attempted to stabilize the token’s price, partially restoring its value. Ayrey temporarily regained access to his account and revealed that the hacker had compromised his profile through a SIM-swap attack targeting his mobile carrier. Nonetheless, shortly thereafter, suspicious activity resumed on the account, indicating a lack of full control.

Ayrey’s AI platform, the chatbot Truth Terminal, gained prominence in the crypto community as a major holder of meme coins, amassing over $1 million through various cryptocurrency donations. The chatbot, developed on Anthropic’s Claude 3 Opus model and trained on social media data, drew the attention of venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who donated $50,000 in Bitcoin following an interaction with the bot.