ADVERTISEMENT

‎‎‎ ‏‏‎

Tech giant Elon Musk is talking about Ethereum for the first time, but it’s not what you might expect.

Musk took to Twitter to discuss how impressed he is by Twitter’s notorious Ethereum scam bots.

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

The tweet prompted an immediate response from Ethereum’s creator.

Vitalik Buterin has long lamented scammers on Twitter. He invented the technique of adding “Not Giving Away ETH” to his Twitter name to counter the fraudsters who are trying to trick people into sending Ether to scam accounts.

I do wish @elonmusk's first tweet about ethereum was about the tech rather than the twitter scambots……..@jack help us please? Or someone from the ETH community make a layer 2 scam filtering solution, please? https://t.co/biVRshZmne — vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) July 9, 2018

Twitter scam artists create profiles that look nearly identical to leading figures in the world of tech and cryptocurrency. The moment the legitimate and verified user sends out a tweet, the bots immediately comment on the Tweet, pretending that same person is giving away cryptocurrency. The scam artists implore people to send a small amount of Ether to a crypto address and promise to send a larger amount in return, which of course never happens.

ADVERTISEMENT

Elon Musk’s potential interest in cryptocurrency is a subject of intense interest in the cryptocurrency community.

Musk was spotted holding a book on crypto back in March.

He also reached out to the crypto community via Twitter to debunk reports that he’s Satoshi Nakamoto, the name used by the unknown creator of Bitcoin.

Not true. A friend sent me part of a BTC a few years, but I don’t know where it is. — Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2017

As for whether he holds any crypto, Musk revealed in February that he is a hodler of just .25 Bitcoin that a friend sent him many years ago.