Robinhood says Vlad Tenev’s X account was hacked in meme coin scam

Robinhood confirmed that CEO Vlad Tenev’s X account was compromised and used to promote a fraudulent meme coin on Thursday.

🚨Heads up: Our CEO Vlad Tenev’s X account was compromised and posted a fake promotion for a meme coin.

We’re working with X to restore access and the post has been removed.

— Robinhood Comms (@RobinhoodComms) July 23, 2026

The company said the unauthorized post had been removed and that it was working with X to restore access to Tenev’s account.

“​​Our CEO Vlad Tenev’s X account was compromised and posted a fake promotion for a meme coin,” Robinhood said.

The compromised account promoted a Robinhood Chain token called Vladhood under the ticker VLAD. The post falsely claimed that the token would become the official mascot of Robinhood Chain and would be listed on the Robinhood trading app.

The token’s market capitalization briefly approached $10 million within minutes of the post being published as traders rushed to buy it.

Robinhood Chain’s Blockscout explorer flagged the token contract as a “potential scam.” The contract had recorded approximately 1,868 transactions after being deployed through PonsLaunchFactory.

The incident comes as Robinhood Chain experiences a surge in speculative meme coin trading. The network launched on July 1 and has generated approximately $9 billion in cumulative decentralized exchange volume, primarily driven by higher risk meme coins, according to Entropy Advisors data cited by The Block.

Disclosure: This article was edited by Estefano Gomez. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.