Twitter has come under fire again in the cryptocurrency community as this time the power of its verified blue badges has been used in an attempt to scam users of Bitfinex and Verge.
The fraudulent verified account has been making the rounds as it first started as an account for Verge, the anonymous cryptocurrency, before shifting to become a Bitfinex account.
By keeping its handle, @seifsbei, it is able to keep the blue badge and maintain an air of verification regarding its chosen Twitter name.
Scams left unchecked
It seems somewhat Ironic that Twitter, which has recently cracked down on the advertising of cryptocurrencies because of their alleged scamming nature, yet has allowed many other faux pas and scams to run rampant, this just the latest.
There was an incident where the handle @Bitcoin, was mistakenly suspended, leading to others taking it over. This caused Ire with Roger Ver, who owns the handle, and opened up a big can of worms on Twitter’s position when it comes to issues relating to the cryptocurrency community.
Verifying the authenticity of the wrong account with the coveted blue badge only creates confusion for followers, especially in a world riddled with fake cryptocurrency giveaways and phishing scams.
Moving along
Verge’s official account posted a warning to its followers, urging Twitter to start doing human verification.
We are NOT doing any give aways at all, as seen below this tweet. These are scams thst are all over every crypto twitter account. We need @Twitter to start doing human verification immediately!
— vergecurrency (@vergecurrency) April 12, 2018
They went on to note that it is happening to “every top coin’s Twitter account.”
Indeed, there was a time where the account moved on to imitate Bitfinex, one of the globe’s top cryptocurrency exchanges, to continue the scam.
Back to normal
As it stands, the handle has gone back to its original position, but quite brazenly, has retweeted some of the warnings out by the likes of Verge.
Vladislav Sopov
Dan Burgin