This Time, It Wasn't Fake Accounts...

Which is why this time was 10x as profitable. Hackers used the real, verified accounts off Joe Biden, Apple, Uber, Barack Obama, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Kanye West, Mike Bloomberg and more to share the scam.

Other than that difference - the exact same "Send me $1000 i'll send you $2000" concept has been used non-stop for years.

Even The Former President was targeted...

Blinded By Greed...

This is my only guess on how this happens.  That the idea of a big payday with minimal effort is basically a dream come true for a lot of people.

First off - this whole thing is something they've never heard of happening before - so you would think the first time would be met with some skepticism.  When has a rich person ever just given away massive amounts of money to random people?

Sure, many give money away to charity - but there's a big difference between charity and throwing cash at random people online.

Secondly - the part where they ask for money, so that they can then give you money... this didn't seem strange!?

Let's imagine some rich person was doing a giveaway like this, for real.

It makes a whole lot more sense to just say "Reply with your wallet address, and i'll send you the money!".

Why would someone giving away money, also be asking for it... from the same person they're about to give some to?!

The Worst Part...

The worst part is, while we should be able to laugh at the expensive lesson these people clearly needed to learn, things like this are unfortunately a PR nightmare for Bitcoin.

Sure, you may hear of legitimate usage of cryptocurrency almost daily - the average person still does not. While the volume of illegitimate transactions is a small percentage of total usage, the stories behind everyday crypto usage are rarely interesting enough for the media to cover.

What has the media covered lately?

If I put myself in the shoes of an outsider for a minute: viruses that lock computers until a ransom is paid, North Korea using it to finance weapons, and now a high profile Twitter hack and scam - these would be the 3 most recent times I heard the word 'bitcoin'.

Thankfully, The Media's Focus Isn't Crypto This Time...

It's Twitter's massive security failure, but many stories still include the typical inaccurate babble about crypto being untraceable, which is untrue.

So far, Twitter's only statement has been:

"We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly."

The tweets have been removed, however they do still show up on various apps that pull data from Twitter but do not update immediately when a post is removed.

Fake tweet is still displayed as legitimate on Google.

For example, at the time of publishing if you google Elon Musk, the first page of Google search results shows the scam as his most recent tweet, with nothing indicating it is fake. 

Bill Gates has angered the cryptocurrency world, and to be fair - he deserves to be scolded a bit for making such an ignorant statement.

In his Reddit AMA (a session where people 'Ask me anything') when asked about cryptocurrencies he said:

"The main feature of cryptocurrencies is their anonymity. I don't think this is a good thing. The Governments ability to find money laundering and tax evasion and terrorist funding is a good thing. Right now cryptocurrencies are used for buying fentanyl and other drugs so it is a rare technology that has caused deaths in a fairly direct way."

It's that last sentence that really has people angry, and it seems to be a recurring theme among the older generation - blame cryptocurrencies for things that have been happening long before the existence of cryptocurrencies.

One twitter user '3ideRaven' had my favorite response...

"Dear @BillGates,

If you can blame cryptocurrency on deaths resulting from the purchase of Fentanyl on the dark web, can we blame your Windows computer for facilitating the transaction?

Signed,
People who aren’t idiots"

Oddly enough, until now Bill Gates seemed pretty positive about cryptocurrencies. In 2014 he made headlines when he told Bloomberg:

"Bitcoin is better than currency in that you don't have to be physically in the same place and, of course, for large transactions, currency can get pretty inconvenient."

It's disappointing to see someone who once seemed to get it, make a complete 180.