Elon Musk’s X Is Making Big Changes to Combat Crypto Scams

Elon Musk’s social media platform, X (formerly Twitter), is making changes to address the feasibility of crypto scams that have long proliferated on the platform, according to posts from X Head of Product Nikita Bier. 

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“We are in the process of implementing auto-locking and verification if a user posts about cryptocurrency for the first time in the history of their account,” Bier posted Wednesday in response to a user who had been hacked days earlier. (Coincidentally, Bier was replying to our former colleague Ben White, who was VP of creator strategy at Rug Rudio, Decrypt‘s sister company.)

“This should kill 99% of the incentive, especially since Google isn’t doing shit to stop the phishing emails,” Bier added. 

In other words, the new rollout may lock down a profile and seek user authentication if it posted about crypto for the first time out of the blue. In Bier’s eyes, this would likely dissuade malicious actors from taking over accounts just to promote crypto tokens. 

Some financial scams, like those promoting crypto tokens or donations and “fake X-trademarked” scams are “rampant” on the platform, according to Bier. He also noted that a “community mention spam attack,” one where many users are tagged in a post that promotes a crypto token, should also now be blocked on the site. 

Ironically, Bier’s comments about diminishing crypto scams on the platform came just hours before a user pretending to be someone else duped multiple news outlets and individuals into believing that a nearly 200-year-old tortoise named Jonathan had died—only to later promote a Solana meme coin based on the world’s oldest land mammal. 

Specifics about how the account auto-locking would have transpired in the scenario had the feature been implemented are not clear, but it may have signaled red flags to consumers long before the hoax was debunked. Bier later indicated on X that the platform would detect meme coin activities without any prior connections, especially with accounts that have a significant number of followers. 

“If you have more than 10K followers and you drop a meme coin without any prior connection to crypto, it is always a hack,” he posted on Thursday.

A representative for X did not immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for more specifics about how the feature will vet the legitimacy of crypto discourse from accounts posting about it for the first time. 

X has a long history with malicious actors who have gained access to accounts belonging to former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, as well as Kanye West and now-owner Musk, all to promote crypto scams. 

In September, the firm took legal action against some banned crypto scammers who were attempting to bribe their way back onto the platform.