Sparking a feeling of confusion as to who was tweeting from Elon Musk’s Twitter account, the social media giant temporarily locked the Tesla and SpaceX founder’s account believing that it had been hacked.

Musk’s account was locked after the billionaire tech genius had tweeted an image of a Bitcoin-branded anime character and quoted the text “Wanna buy some Bitcoin?” Amusingly, Twitter’s security team picked out the tweet as a potential sham, resulting in the billionaire’s account being locked.

Currently, Musk boasts a staggering 23.2 million followers on Twitter. It comes as no surprise that the curious tweet gathered plenty of traction from his multi-million Twitter fanbase. In total, the tweet has instigated 22,200 likes and 9,300 retweets, with some of the earlier retweets coming from some major players within the cryptosphere.

Zhao Changpeng, who is the founder of Binance and appears to be one of Musk’s Twitter followers, retweeted jokingly saying: “I will buy a Tesla if you accept crypto.”

Wanna buy some Bitcoin? 😉😉 pic.twitter.com/9ZbBJ5fuVq — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 22, 2018

Twitter Celebrity Impersonation Crackdown Was Given as The Reason Behind the Account Lock Out

This latest Elon Musk Twitter saga came as a result of the startup’s efforts to clamp down on scammers, who may be using celebrity names to create accounts in a bid to scam cryptocurrency investors, like you or I. Inadvertently, the crackdown operation was actually instigated by Musk himself.

Due to there being a number of fake Twitter users offering the community “free cryptocurrency giveaways” while giving the impression the tweet was created by a well-known celebrity, crypto big shot Vitalik Buterin purportedly persuaded Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey to put measures in place in an attempt to cease the propagation of such scams.

Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, made the request in response to a July 2018 tweet from Musk, in which the world-renowned entrepreneur made reference to the Twitter scambots that impersonate celebrities, while also complimenting them by saying “Mad Skillz” and misspelling Ethereum as “Etherium”.

I want to know who is running the Etherium scambots! Mad skillz … — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 8, 2018

In a twist of fate, it seems the whole anti-spam episode temporarily backfired on Musk, as Twitter took his latest tweet out of context, sending alarm bells ringing within the Twitter security team.

Twitter can be forgiven for their mistake too because how could a serious billionaire and key player within the world of cryptocurrencies be tweeting such nonsense? It seems the phrase “want to buy some Bitcoin” and an anime character image triggered some red flags.

Elon Musk’s Anime Character Was Created in Japan

The character in Elon Musk’s tweet derives from the Japanese website CryptoCurrencyGirls, in which different cryptocurrencies have their own anime character. At the same time, the website aims to teach its visitors about digital currencies.

Bitcoin’s character is a virtual currency city dweller and is depicted as a karaoke-loving pop icon. Ethereum runs the city’s school libraries, while kitted out in a dressing gown and spectacles.

Site members can shop for branded souvenirs, anime characters, and accessories such as iPhone cases sporting the anime characters created by the website. There are also plenty of other items anime characters that are not based on cryptocurrencies such as an iMac, which has its own character.

The concept of taking a non-human object and turning it into an anime character has become big business in Japan. It seems Elon Musk has somehow stumbled across this new fad and declared his love for anime characters on Twitter.