Despite Elon Musk’s tenure of 10 months, crypto scams on X (formerly Twitter) are still thriving.
One of the recent prevalent scams was a fake ‘GBTC’ token giveaway. Scammers falsely claimed association with the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, the world’s largest Bitcoin fund, and repurposed its GBTC ticker for a supposed $25 million token distribution.
To participate in the giveaway, the scam post directed readers to a website resembling Grayscale’s official site. The post was made by an account with the handle @Grayscale_FND, which bore similarities to the real company but was entirely unrelated to the actual fund.
The post has since been removed, but not before receiving up to 1,500 likes. Replies were disabled, a tactic commonly used by social media scammers to prevent victims from being alerted.
The New Checkmark Problem
Additionally, the fake account had a blue checkmark, indicating premium status on X. Before Musk’s takeover, blue checks were reserved for popular influencers, celebrities, and organizations as a means of verifying authenticity.
Since Musk’s involvement, however, the badge could be obtained for $8 per month, leading to an influx of scammers impersonating genuine groups. When Musk acquired Twitter, he vowed to combat the prevalence of spam bots, which are common within the online crypto community.
Nevertheless, there are ways to differentiate: the actual Grayscale account, @Grayscale, possesses a gold verification badge, which is more expensive than the premium badge and reserved for official businesses.
Examining the fake account’s posts, a long list of retweets from the official Grayscale account can be observed. A retweeted post is indicated at the top of one’s account feed.
Given the recent victory over the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in court, it’s understandable that Grayscale is targeted for scams. Since the win, the discount of GBTC shares compared to the fund’s underlying Bitcoin value has decreased from 25% to 17%.
