On July 23, 2026, hackers gained access to the X (formerly Twitter) account of Robinhood’s co-founder and CEO, Vlad Tenev. They then used his account to advertise a fraudulent cryptocurrency called Vladhood.
Key Takeaways
- Hackers hijacked Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev’s X account on July 23, 2026, to push a fake VLAD token.
- Wallets behind the scam pulled an estimated 690 ETH, about $1.3 million, before the token collapsed.
- Robinhood Chain, live since July 1, keeps drawing scams as meme coin trading outpaces its RWA goals.
A recent post falsely claimed that ‘Vladhood,’ a token with the symbol VLAD, was the official mascot of Robinhood Chain, Robinhood’s new blockchain. The post shared a contract address and suggested the token would be available on the Robinhood app, but all of this information was inaccurate.
Robinhood’s communications team caught the breach fast. At around 2:05 p.m. ET, the @RobinhoodComms account posted that Tenev’s account had been compromised and that the fake promotion had been removed.
The company said it was working with X to restore access.
What Happened Onchain
Traders bought in within minutes, reacting to what looked like backing from a sitting CEO. Onchain trackers pieced together the mechanics fast.
- About 70% of the token supply sat with the earliest wallets, a sign of concentrated control from the start.
- Vladhood’s market cap reached somewhere between $4 million and $10 million shortly after the post appeared.
- The wallets behind the token cashed out an estimated 690 ETH, worth roughly $1.3 million, before the price collapsed.
- Liquidity was never locked or burned, so a 1% fee kept flowing to whoever controlled the pool.
After the project ended, many regular users were left with the token. Within an hour, blockchain analysis tools identified the related smart contract as potentially dangerous.
A Familiar Playbook
Account takeovers built around meme coins go back years. The 2020 hijacking of Twitter accounts belonging to Elon Musk, Bill Gates, and several companies for a bitcoin giveaway scam remains the best-known case, some using deep fakes. The Tenev incident followed the same shape: borrow a trusted account, post a contract address, let FOMO do the work, then exit.
The key difference with this project was its branding. Vladhood directly linked itself to Tenev and the release of Robinhood Chain, strategically launching it when traders were actively looking for new tokens on that network.
Robinhood Chain went live on the Ethereum layer-2 network on July 1, built on the Arbitrum Orbit stack for tokenized stocks and other real-world assets. Meme coins took over early trading volume instead. Tenev acknowledged the shift himself in a July 8 post, writing that while the chain was built for real-world assets, “it works great for memes too.”
Crypto Traders Warn About VLAD Meme Coin
As soon as it was obvious a hack had occurred, crypto traders on X quickly alerted others, advising them against purchasing the VLAD meme coin and providing details tracing where the stolen funds were going.
This incident is the latest in a series of issues following the launch of Robinhood Chain. It comes after a previous claim about a wallet belonging to Tenev, which researchers couldn’t verify.
This recent hack highlights an important lesson for companies using blockchain technology with actual money: the weakness isn’t necessarily in the blockchain itself, but often in simple things like user logins.
2026-07-23 23:28