The NBA has a password or two to change.
Fans went into a frenzy over a message that was posted on Tuesday afternoon to the NBA’s official page on X, which has over 48 million followers. The message said that the NBA was launching its own cryptocurrency called NBA Coin that would be hosted on the Solana network.
The post also came with an address to a crypto wallet and an official-looking release about the supposed launch of NBA Coin. Here is the post (which was soon deleted).
Alas, there is no NBA Coin coming, and the whole post was an entirely-fake scam message. An NBA source confirmed to Front Office Sports that their X page had been hacked.
The hackers also apparently got into the official X pages of the Cleveland Cavaliers and NASCAR. Both accounts posted similar messages about the supposed launches of “Cavs” and “NASCAR” tokens on Solana before the posts were deleted. NASCAR has since confirmed to Front Office Sports that they were hacked as well.
The NBA has made a few legitimate forays into the cryptocurrency space over the years, including with the 2021 launch of NBA Top Shot, which is an officially licensed digital collectible that is based on the blockchain. Some NBA teams have even made individual decisions to accept cryptocurrency for in-arena purchases. But there is, in fact, no NBA Coin coming as the league will probably now be less concerned with cryptocurrency and more so concerned with cybersecurity.
