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GTA 6 leaker cashes out in $250,000 crypto rug pull just hours before Rockstar's official reveal — memecoin crashes as Cyberleek's 'anti-corporate' campaign ends in a payday
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The person or group behind nine days of Grand Theft Auto VI gameplay leaks cashed out of the $CYBERLEEK memecoin on Thursday, hours before Rockstar's Extended Look premiered on Netflix, according to on-chain data reported by CoinDesk. The wallet that created the Solana token claimed roughly $146,000 in wrapped SOL plus 15.4 million tokens in accumulated creator fees, then sold the whole allocation for about $125,000 in SOL in a single transaction, with GTAForums user ViceCit — who has been documenting the debacle — putting the total exit near $250,000 across four transactions.
The token, which “Cyberleek” watermarked onto every leaked clip, next to a QR code and a promise that a higher market cap would buy more leaks, peaked at around $0.0344 on August 23, per data cited by CoinDesk. It now trades near $0.002725 and is continuing to fall.
“Cyberleek” minted $CYBERLEEK on Solana around August 15, just a few days before the first gameplay clip appeared online, and its manifesto against digital-only preorders. As PC Gamer explained, liquidity providers collect a cut of the fees charged on every trade through the pool. As each gameplay leak drove trading volume, each trade through the pool charged a fee that accrued to Cyberleek as its liquidity provider. The $250,000 estimated exit came from those accumulated fees rather than from dumping a founder's stash on the market.
As the leaker’s campaign pushed on, 270 million reserve tokens, worth about $1.79 million at the time, were burned, which commentators believe was part of a trust-building exercise to keep traders in the pool and the fees flowing. GTAForums’ Vice Cit wrote in a post that the scheme was "planned out and executed very intentionally to maximize the money they'll make."
As the scheme came to a close Thursday afternoon, its proceeds were moved into four newly created wallets after being cashed out. At least 91 SOL were deposited in a KuCoin account, per CoinDesk. Another portion went to CCE.Cash, a non-custodial, anonymous swap service.
Take-Two filed DMCA subpoenas on August 20 demanding that Microsoft and Discord identify the “CyberLeek” persona by September 4, and has since served a similar subpoena on X.
KuCoin does verify its users through Know Your Customer verification. However, given that it’s an entity headquartered in the Seychelles, there’s no route for a civil subpoena to be served, let alone any mechanism to force the company to comply if one were served. KuCoin hasn’t had a U.S. presence since early last year, when it pleaded guilty to operating an unlicensed money transmitting business and exited the U.S. market after paying a $297 million Department of Justice settlement.
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The final leak, a four-plus-minute cut of protagonist Lucia's prologue, appeared on August 26, with the same on-screen plea for more leaks in exchange for more trading volume. No new leaks have been posted since the meme coin was cashed out, despite “Cyberleek” claiming to hold a full working build of the game. The saga has also (predictably) spawned a fake 113GB ISO padded with malware. GTA VI launches November 19.