Twitter is offering special profile pictures for NFT holders, meanwhile Musk wants the company to focus on crypto scammers
Tesla (TSLA) – Get Tesla Inc Report CEO, and infrequent cryptocurrency evangelist, Elon Musk is taking Twitter (TWTR) – Get Twitter, Inc. Report to task over the company’s plans to offer NFT holders special profile pictures.
Twitter will display NFT profile pictures in a special hexagonal shape as long as the user connects their crypto wallet to their social media profile.
Musk is unimpressed to say the least.
Twitter didn’t respond immediately to a request to comment.
Musk Is a Crypto Advocate… Kind Of
Elon Musk has helped take cryptocurrency mainstream through his advocacy online. There have been multiple instances of Musk tweets that sent fringe cryptos soaring after receiving his stamp of approval.
However, Musk has also been the cause of major drops in crytpo at certain times. Twitter didn’t respond immediately to a request to comment.
In May, Musk caused an online furor when he announced that Tesla would suspend vehicle purchases using bitcoin out of concern over “rapidly increasing use of fossil fuels for bitcoin mining.”
Bitcoin prices dropped 5% in the minutes after Musk made those statements.
Musk has come under fire for his bitcoin comments, with South African asset manager Sygnia calling Musk’s bitcoin tweets “market manipulation” that should be investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Last February, Tesla revealed that it purchased $1.5 billion of bitcoin and that it would be accepting the currency as a payment method.
That announcement sent bitcoin soaring before Musk’s later comments deflated the bubble.
What Is a Spambot/Scambot?
Crypto scambots are spambots that use algorithms to target potential marks who may be interested in investing in bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies.
An investigation by Duo Labs in 2018 found at least 15,000 crypto scam bots operating on Twitter. The crypto scam botnet consists of accounts programmed to deploy malicious behaviors and evade detection and look like real profiles.
The researchers were able to map the botnet’s three-tiered structure, which consists of “hub” accounts that many bots follow, scam publishing bots, and amplification bots that like and retweet tweets to increase their popularity and appear legit.
“Users are likely to trust a tweet depending on how many times it’s been retweeted or liked. Those behind this particular botnet know this and have designed it to exploit this very tendency,” Olabode Anise, a data scientist and co-author of the report said.
