People sent monies with the hope that they would be doubled only to realize it was a scam.
Twitter accounts belonging to Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Apple and Uber, among other prominent handles, were compromised on Wednesday and posted tweets that appeared to promote a cryptocurrency scam.
The accounts, along with those of Kanye West and Jeff Bezos, posted similar tweets soliciting donations via Bitcoin to their verified profiles on Wednesday.
“Everyone is asking me to give back, and now is the time,” Gates’ tweet said, promising to double all payments to a Bitcoin address for the next 30 minutes
A tweet sent by Elon Musk’s account on Wednesday asked for Bitcoin and promised to “double all payments” sent to an address.
It was the beginning of a wave of takeovers of high-profile Twitter accounts, including Apple, Uber, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Microsoft founder Bill Gates, former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, and several cryptocurrency-related companies.
One wallet linked to in the tweets had apparently received over 11 bitcoin, worth over $100,000 at the current exchange rate, according to Blockchain.com.
The Musk tweet was deleted minutes after it was sent, before a second tweet asking for bitcoin was posted from the same account and deleted again. In total, Musk’s account sent three bitcoin tweets from a Twitter web account and one reply to Bill Gates.
The bitcoin-related tweet was Apple’s first ever tweet, although the account had placed ads in the past.
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