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'Prince of Darkness' Ozzy Osbourne's Death Sparks Wave of Rug-Pulls on Solana
Ozzy Osbourne’s death on Tuesday has sparked a wave of scam tokens on Solana, as bad actors exploit the heavy metal icon’s legacy for quick cash grabs.
Updated Jul 23, 2025, 2:15 p.m. Published Jul 23, 2025, 11:03 a.m.
What to know:
- More than a dozen “OZZY” tokens launched on Solana in the hours after Osbourne’s death, many flagged as high-risk or outright scams.
- Several pools saw liquidity pulled within minutes, netting creators an estimated investor loss of over $300,000.
- The trend highlights how memecoin culture often feeds on celebrity deaths, with crypto markets offering little recourse for victims.
The death of the legendary rockstar Ozzy Osbourne, “Prince of Darkness,” on Tuesday has triggered a frenzy in the crypto markets. Within hours, opportunistic developers began minting “OZZY” and “RIP Ozzy” tokens across the Solana blockchain, hoping to capitalize on the heavy metal icon’s passing.
Blockchain data reveals at least 15 Solana-based memecoins bearing Ozzy’s name launched in the past two hours alone. Many of these tokens attracted speculative traders with promises of quick gains, but turned out to be classic pump-and-dump schemes. In several cases, developers pulled liquidity from their token pools within minutes of launch.
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According to on-chain data, at least 10 of these tokens were confirmed rug pulls, draining an estimated 1,625 SOL from liquidity pools—roughly $325,000 at current market prices. Additional suspected scams from smaller pools could push total investor losses to between 1,675 and 1,725 SOL, equivalent to $335,000–$345,000.
This pattern echoes other opportunistic scams, such as those seen on Bitcoin Pizza Day when memecoin shysters profited over $200,000 in rug-pulls.
A report by Solidus Labs claimed that up to 98% of tokens on Pump.fun were rug pulls or pump and dump schemes, a claim that the project refuted by saying Solidus "lacks a basic understanding of memecoins."
"98% of memecoins - just like NFTs, tweets, IG posts, trading cards, and most art - are worth little in the long run. That’s precisely the point. What IS important is the availability of a functioning marketplace connecting motivated buyers and sellers AND the underlying cultural expression to which the market attributes or assigns value over time. That's where the magic happens and where we learn what’s truly valuable," Pump.fun spokesperson Troy Gravitt told CoinDesk in May.
Read more: Bitcoin Pizza Day Turns Sour as Memecoin Shysters Profit Over $200K in Rug Pulls
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