Minister’s hacked X account promotes ‘House of Commons cryptocurrency’ scam

Commons Leader Lucy Powell had her X account hacked on Tuesday, with the page repeatedly publicising a “House of Commons cryptocoin” scam.

Ms Powell’s profile, which is verified by the social media platform and mentions her Cabinet position, posted several times about a digital currency “bringing people’s power to the blockchain”, branded with the slogan “Transparency, participation, trust”.

An image included on one post by the Labour MP showed the House of Commons insignia, including the portcullis logo. The posts were deleted shortly after being published.

The same thing happened in January to BBC politics presenter Laura Kuenssberg, who had her X account hacked to promote a BBC crypto coin.

Luke Nolan, a senior research associate at CoinShares, an asset management company specialising in digital assets, said the hack is an example of “pump and dump”.

It happens when people who created the cryptocoin inflate its value, get others to invest, and then sell their majority share to get profit, but leave the coin worthless.

Mr Nolan said there had only been 34 transactions on the coin, which would have led to a profit of about £225 (300 US dollars).

He said: “It appears that the tweet got deleted quite quickly, which meant that the deployer (person who made the coin) did not really get a chance to extract that much from people who might have invested in the coin.

“The way these work, generally speaking, is people create coins. The exploiters then buy up a large portion of the supply before releasing it, waiting for other unsuspecting users to buy, then quickly dumping the tokens for a quick profit. These can be massively profitable.”

A spokesman for Ms Powell said: “Lucy Powell’s personal X account was hacked this morning.

“Steps were taken quickly to secure the account and remove misleading posts.”

A House of Commons spokesman confirmed there is no House of Commons cryptocoin.

He said: “UK Parliament takes cyber security extremely seriously. We provide advice to users – including Members – to make them aware of the risks and how to manage their digital safety; however, we do not comment on specific details of our cyber security policies”.