The BTC20 crypto project has had its original Twitter account reactivated, after it was briefly suspended following the conclusion of its presale.
Social media channels being removed can be a sign of a crypto project being a scam or ‘rug pull’, as the developers ghost investors and vanish, or it can be triggered accidentally by Twitter in the course of deleting spam accounts and bots.
Scam BTC20 Accounts – How To Spot
Almost every new crypto presale that builds up a following is targetted by fake accounts that impersonate the project’s legitimate account on Twitter – as well as on Telegram, Discord, Instagram and any other social media platform.
Twitter (now rebranded as X) is particularly notorious for crypto scam accounts and bots, as now any account can purchase a verified ‘blue tick’ account – X Blue, formerly known as Twitter Blue.
Often these accounts display a ‘send us a private message’ button, as if they post links they are more likely to be shadow banned, and have their replies to users hidden. It’s also more difficult for them to impersonate a crypto project’s domain in links, and not be spotted and reported.
Scammers will create fake engagement on their posts – fake likes, retweets, even comments – and reply to any normal investors that initially reply to the official account, attempting to trick them into a one-on-one conversation in DM (direct messages), where they then share a fake link privately.
As a general rule, never communicate in DM – always ask questions in public, and never provide your 12 word seed phrase to sign any crypto transactions. MetaMask and Trust Wallet currently do not have a way to preview the result of a transaction, making it difficult to know if a site is malicious or not. Some alternative crypto wallets have recently added that feature.
Report and block any DMs from users asking you to ‘validate’ your crypto wallet, or offering you an airdrop – even if they look and sound like admins. Scammers will use the same profile picture and user name as project admins, which can appear identical if the scammer uses an ASCII character to replace certain letters.
BTC20 Legit Twitter Reactivated
Due to the success of the BTC20 presale, meeting its hard cap sooner than expected, a large number of bot accounts are impersonating its admins and socials.
According to a message sent to the BTC20 team from Twitter, that was the reason for the official account’s accidental removal – the bulk automated deletion of spam accounts.
$BTC20 now has two Twitter accounts, the original which is now restored – @BTC20Token – and the new one that was set up to replace it, however that will no longer be used.
One scam account even has a 2012 join date, almost 3000 followers, and 32,000 tweets – scammers will often buy an old account, add a blue tick and change the @ handle. However the unique Twitter ID can never be changed.
To spot the right accounts, either check the numeric Twitter ID or simply visit the official website of a project – in this case btc20.com – and find the legitimate Twitter link on the homepage.
The legit BTC20 Twitter account has a June 2023 join date, set up shortly before the presale began, and over 4000 followers at the time of writing.
$656 million was lost to crypto scams, hacks and rug pulls in the first half of 2023, according to a report by Web3 security firm Beosin.
BTC20 Tops Trending Cryptocurrency List After Presale
Google searches for BTC20 now rival those for Pepe coin, as BTC20 has become one of the most trending cryptocurrency projects of the year, prior to its upcoming ICO.
The 2.0 meta has been one of the most popular crypto narratives of 2023, started by Pepe 2.0 and leading to a long list of projects such as Doge 2.0, Shib 2.0, $BITCOIN, $SOLANA and others which adopt the name and aesthetics of an established big cap coin.
$BITCOIN even managed to hit an over $100 million market cap at its peak – its full name being HarryPotterObamaSonic10Inu – and is the top trending cryptocurrency on Uniswap at the time of writing, according to DEXTools which tracks coins on decentralized exchanges.
Read our early review of the BTC20 presale here.
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