Minutes ago, the Twitter account of Tesla CEO Elon Musk sent out a suspicious message involving Bitcoin.
The message read: “I’m feeling generous because of COVID-19. I’ll double any BTC payment sent to my BTC address for the next hour…”
Attached was a Segwit Bitcoin address.
The message garnered thousands of likes and retweets in the few minutes it was up.
Shortly after it was published, the tweet was deleted, with Elon Musk or Twitter admins seemingly regaining authority of the account and deleting the message.
But it quickly became apparent that this was not the case. The following message was published minutes later, with the account sharing the exact same Bitcoin address with a slightly altered message.
Feeling greatful, doubling all payments sent to my BTC address!
You send $1,000, I send back $2,000!
Only doing this for the next 30 minutes.bc1qxy2kgdygjrsqtzq2n0yrf2493p83kkfjhx0wlh
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2020
As of this article’s writing, the Bitcoin address has accumulated 2.7 BTC, worth approximately $25,000.
Under Musk’s tweet are replies from individuals that were affected.
Not the Only Account Tweeting a Crypto Scam
These messages were not isolated to Elon Musk’s Twitter account, followed by over 36 million around the world.
Over the past hour as of this article’s writing, prominent Twitter accounts all across the cryptocurrency space have shared suspicious messages.
Accounts of top Bitcoin analysts posted an advertisement for a ‘trading group’. And accounts of exchanges and certain industry executives posted a link a message advertising a purported charity campaign, “Crypto for Health.”
Accounts affected include the @Bitcoin handle, one of the largest crypto handles, Justin Sun, Charlie Lee, trader Angelo, Gemini, Binance, and more.
All these accounts posted the messages in a short period of time (around within an hour) but not all at the same time.
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