As Grand Theft Auto 6 continues to leak via small snippets of gameplay, you might be wondering why each video is plastered with watermarks for a meme coin? It turns out while you’re enjoying the early look at Rockstar’s latest project, others are literally profiting off of the virality.
Each of the leaked gameplay videos have advertised a meme coin called CYBERLEEK, named after the supposed leaker and hosted on the Solana blockchain. This coin seemingly appeared on August 16, just two days before the first gameplay leak occurred. It didn’t take long for the price of the coin to skyrocket afterwards, as viewers curious enough to go looking started accumulating vast amounts of it.
In the space of a day, the price of the coin increased by more than 5,000%, allowing some early holders to quickly cash out before most were able to react. It’s a textbook pump-and-dump scheme that is ongoing, with the price still swinging wildly with new drops of gameplay and new buyers being lured in. It’s not uncommon for memecoins to be promoted by exploiting trending topics on X.
The extent of this scheme is, however, probably smaller than you might imagine. According to tracking on CoinMarketCap, several buyers have made some modest profit, with the largest coming in at over $22,000 (a 2,000% profit over what was invested). There are similarly large losses as well, with several instances of duped buyers who have lost nearly $10,000 each.
This pales in comparison to far wider-reaching meme coins. Take MELANIA, a coin marketed by Melania Trump, which has profits and losses in the several millions as just one example of how quickly thousands of people are willing to bet on short-term investments,
Still, it shows an entirely different intent behind these leaks that contradicts the front-facing consumer-friendly goals of the group behind them. There are still a handful of accounts, holding the large majority of CYBERLEEK, that haven’t made any sales. Perhaps they’re just waiting for things to get really out of hand before walking away with their profits.
Grand Theft Auto 6 launches on November 12, with its first gameplay showcase debuting on Netflix on August 27.