Binance Co-founder Urges Elon Musk to Tackle Cryptocurrency Scams on X
Yi He, the co-founder of Binance, has voiced her opinions on the rise of cryptocurrency scams co-founded by the social media X platform which is owned by Elon Musk.
Yi He Calls for Action
Recently, Yi He took to the app and questioned if Musk would come to the rescue first. The reason for Yi He’s seet was due to the fact that she was being impersonated by a specific impersonation scam that was taking place on the X platform. She provided a snapshot of accounts that were a clear counterfeit of her X account (@heyibinance) and her real name.
In a case of the scam, users were the link to the Binance-backed meme-coin page. Yi He, however, warned that no coins had been allotted and that the link would not only dry the funds, as there are no such memecoins offered by her. “I didn’t get any MEMEcoins. Click the link and you will get your funds stolen”, she typed. “Many people have been lured by this hacker link, and they have lost a lot of money today. Is anything that can be done about this?”
Crypto Scams Increase on X
Amid other frauds, the proliferation of cryptocurrency scams on X seems to be unstoppable. However, leaving it unstopped, experts think scammers on the platform are the main reason for the dramatic increase in the number of cryptocurrency scams committed. Scam Sniffer, which is a web3-based anti-scam company, carried out an analysis that showed over $50 million is stolen monthly and because of account impersonation.
There were already such problems even before Elon Musk got involved with the platform. Through the misinformation about the new boss’s paid verification service the public may be scammed by impersonators. The service allows anyone with a smartphone to register with and receive verification, which may be met with more challenges in distinguishing the true accounts from the fakes.
Despite Musk’s recent commitment to addressing bot and spam issues, it is still not clear if he has zeroed in on cryptocurrency scam concerns. Currently, Musk has not replied to Yi He’s post on X.com.
X Accounts Hacked to Promote Scams
From the start of 2024 on, some big X-biz accounts and cryptocurrency huge names had scammers who had administrated the run to hook the clients into the fake promotions. The US regulator, SEC’s X account, was hacked in January to make an announcement of Bitcoin ETFs being approved and a fake one. Then after the X security branch explained that their record of the SIM swapper was the real attacker that had used the number of the official account of SEC, the scammers got hold of the account. The latest Microsoft account that was broken into is almost like the ones before and most of the experts suspect it to be the SIM-swap attack.
Consequently, the crypto scammers set their sights on the Netgear and Hyundai MEA accounts as well. They deployed the scams aiming to infect users with the cryptocurrency wallet drainer malware. Along with this, CoinGecko encountered a security incident in January when its account became the subject of a phishing attack. For a short period on January 10, a phishing link was posted on their X account, telling users about a false CoinGecko token airdrop. The hackers launched a false cryptocurrency called GCKO in a fake post that claimed they can use it to pay for API services like the cryptocurrency ANKR.
