Elon Musk can no longer tolerate online crypto scams.
The business magnate and chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX took to Twitter to warn his 31 million followers that crypto scams on the microblogging platform have reached new heights.
“This is not cool,” writes the Tesla and SpaceX CEO.
It appears that scams involving digital currencies are irking Musk – and for good reason.
Crypto scammers have a history of taking over Twitter accounts that have an official “verified” seal and then changing the usernames to match the names of high-profile people in the world of tech, including Musk and Vitalik Buterin, the co-creator of Ethereum. The fraudsters then trick other Twitter users into sending Bitcoin to fake tech celebs and other bogus accounts.
Most crypto scams follow the same strategy. They impersonate a wealthy personality like Musk and purport to give away free Bitcoin. To participate in the free “giveaway”, users must first send a small amount of crypto to verify their wallet address. Scammers promise participants that they will then receive a large sum of Bitcoin in return.
To combat the growing problem, Musk encourages his followers to immediately report scammers. He adds,
“Troll/bot networks on Twitter are a *dire* problem for adversely affecting public discourse & ripping people off. Just dropping their prominence as a function of probable gaming of the system would be a big improvement.”
Featured Image: Shutterstock/Sergey Nivens