After a 10-month tenure under Elon Musk’s reign, cryptocurrency scams continue to proliferate on X (formerly Twitter).
One of the most recent and prominent scams on the platform took the form of a deceptive ‘GBTC’ token giveaway. Scammers falsely claimed an affiliation with the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, the world’s largest Bitcoin fund, by misappropriating its GBTC ticker for a purported $25 million token distribution.
To participate in this scheme, individuals were directed to a webpage resembling Grayscale’s official site. The scam post was shared under the account handle @Grayscale_FND, a profile that bore a striking resemblance in name and profile to the legitimate company but had no connection whatsoever to the actual fund.
Although the post has since been detected and removed, it managed to accumulate up to 1,500 likes before being taken down. Notably, replies to the post were disabled, a common tactic employed by social media scammers to hinder the community from alerting potential victims to their fraudulent activities.
The Emerging Challenge of the Verification Checkmark
Complicating matters further is the deceptive presence of a blue verification checkmark on the fraudulent account. This checkmark is a symbol denoting an account’s premium status on X. Prior to Musk’s involvement, blue checkmarks were exclusively reserved for well-known influencers, celebrities, and reputable organizations, serving as a means to distinguish genuine accounts from impostors.
However, since the billionaire’s acquisition of Twitter, the badge has become accessible to anyone willing to pay $8 per month, resulting in a flood of scammers seeking to flawlessly mimic legitimate entities. When Musk assumed control of Twitter, he pledged to “combat the onslaught of spam bots,” which are notoriously prevalent within the online cryptocurrency community.
Nonetheless, there are methods to discern the authentic account from the counterfeit one. The genuine company’s account, @Grayscale, features a gold verification badge, an exclusive marker designated for legitimate businesses, which entails a considerably higher cost than the premium badge.
Furthermore, a glance at the posts made by the fake account reveals a significant number of reposts from the official Grayscale account. A retweeted post is prominently marked at the top of one’s account feed.
The surge in scams targeting Grayscale is unsurprising, especially in light of the company’s recent legal triumph against the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in court last month. Following this victory, the discount on its GBTC shares in relation to the fund’s underlying Bitcoin value has narrowed from 25% to 17%.
