Cryptocurrencies
Twitter Is a Hotbed for Crypto Scams
- Fraudsters ask for small deposit in return for larger amounts
- Twitter suspended Kraken account for alerting users to scams
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Here’s a quiz: which one of these Twitter accounts has received the extra layer of trust that comes from being a verified user? Kraken, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in the world, or Chris Giancarlo, the head of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission?
If you said Giancarlo, sorry. The verification issue on Twitter isn’t just about the inner workings of a social media giant, but a window into the proliferating digital currency scams that are infecting the platform. In some cases accounts that are fraudulent have nonetheless received the blue check that symbolizes Twitter verification, and have gone on to unfurl their fraud on the site, Buzzfeed reported on Feb. 23.