Regardless of the recent Bitcoin scam carried out through a Twitter hack, BTC price remained largely unaffected, only dropping about 1%.
Yesterday, 15th July, Twitter accounts of high-profile individuals, companies and crypto exchanges were hacked to post false bitcoin giveaways. The compromised Twitter accounts include prominent names like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Barack Obama, Elon Musk, Mike Bloomberg and many others. The Bitcoin hack also affected several corporate Twitter accounts like Uber, and Apple, as well as crypto exchange companies – Coinbase and Binance.
Despite the false giveaways that got a lot of Twitter interactions, Bitcoin price did not increase. Currently, CoinMarketCap shows that Bitcoin only declined by 1.19% in 24 hours. The king coin is now trading at $9,111.90, lower than its previous close of $9,171.93.
The scam tweets posted on the celebrities’ accounts passed the same information about a supposed bitcoin giveaway. The tweets also included a Bitcoin wallet address for making payments. The compromised tweet on Apple’s verified Twitter account said:
“We are giving back to our community. We support Bitcoin and you should too! All Bitcoin sent to our address below will be sent back to you doubled!…Only going for the next 30 minutes.”
In response to tweets, Tyler Winklevoss, CEO of Gemini, warned his followers in a tweet saying:
“This is a SCAM, DO NOT participate!”
Winklevoss added that the hackers behind the scam were in partnership with “CryptoForHealth,” an unknown group. To create awareness and prevent more people from losing money to the scammers, Twitter users started tweeting with the hashtag, “#CryptoForHealth.”
Jack Dorsey, Twitter CEO, reacted to the hack in a tweet he posted earlier today. In the tweet, he promised to keep people informed on the ongoing investigation regarding the incident. Hours later, the Twitter Support account posted an update, describing the hack as a “coordinated social engineering attack.” Twitter believes the hackers targeted some of the company’s employees that have access to internal systems and tools. However, certain unnamed sources claim that a “Twitter insider” was responsible for the massive hack. According to one of the sources, the hackers paid the Twitter insider to help breach the accounts.
No Influence on Bitcoin, What Effects the Hack on Twitter Has
As a result of the Bitcoin hack, Twitter partially shut down some access. Twitter locked down the targeted accounts and removed the tweets posted by the hackers. As part of precautionary measures to prevent further damages, the company also limited access for several verified Twitter accounts. Following the hack, many verified users were unable to tweet, and could only retweet other posts.
Later at night, Twitter Support declared that most accounts should be able to tweet again but warned that “the functionality may come and go”. The company added:
“Internally, we’ve taken significant steps to limit access to internal systems and tools while our investigation is ongoing.”
Other Bitcoin-related news can be found here.
Tolu is a cryptocurrency and blockchain enthusiast based in Lagos. He likes to demystify crypto stories to the bare basics so that anyone anywhere can understand without too much background knowledge.
When he’s not neck-deep in crypto stories, Tolu enjoys music, loves to sing and is an avid movie lover.
