The X account of movie star Tom Holland was recently hacked, with attackers using it to falsely promote SPIDER cryptocurrency tokens and Spiderverse NFTs.
The account, which boasts more than 7 million followers, was used by bad actors to announce that the Spider-Man star was supposedly launching “Spiderverse” in partnership with the global crypto exchange Binance.
The compromised account also attached a link to a sham website, urging users to get early access to the fraudulent SPIDER cryptocurrency as well as Spiderverse NFTs.
With all signs pointing towards a potential hack, some early-captured screenshots also showed a mysterious man’s selfie emerging on the actor’s X profile subsequently.
The now-deleted post displayed an inverted face reveal of the presumed hacker in a mask, which was pulled down to his chin. The curly-haired individual, potentially the hacker himself, captioned the post, “would u kiss me while i hang from my web xxx,” referencing the iconic upside-down kiss from the original Tobey Maguire-led Spider-Man flick.
The post, which was initially pinned on his profile, has already been taken down.
This hack’s timing also crazily coincides with Sam Raimi’s 2002 directorial’s return to select movie theatres on April 15.
The incident sparked a flurry of posts from bewildered fans. While some expressed relief that Holland hadn’t genuinely endorsed cryptocurrency, others seized the opportunity to poke fun at the bizarre turn of events.
As always, fans took this chance to meme the situation as tweets stating, “How do you hack Tom Holland’s Twitter account and make the stupidest tweets ever instead of having ur chance to fake tease Spider-Man 4 and go crazy?” surfaced online.
On the flip side, others were just relieved to find out they hadn’t lost their much-loved web-slinger to the crypto scheme. Someone wrote online: “okay nvm tom holland was hacked he is redeemed really thought we lost another man to disappointment!”
While Holland’s “Spiderverse” post is certainly fake, Marvel has already dipped its toes into web3.
In late 2021, American movie theater giant AMC joined forces with Sony Pictures to offer thousands of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to some people who purchased tickets for Holland’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in advance. The movie managed to gross more than $1.9 billion, becoming a major hit. The NFT gimmick contributed to the second-biggest one-day ticket sales of all time for AMC.
Prior to that, New Zealand-based NFT company VeVe also teamed up with Marvel to offer Spider-Man NFTs. One of the NFTs included the very first Marvel book that was released all the way back in 1939.
Earlier this year, Ethereum-powered digital collectibles platform VeVe also released NFT comics with such Marvel heroes as Spider-Man, X-Men, and so on.
