Elon Musk attacks Twitter over crypto scams after NFT launch

By David Pichodo

Investing.com – On Thursday, Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) announced the launch of a tool allowing users to showcase non-fungible tokens (NFTs) in their profile picture, attempting to cash-in on the digital collectibles craze that exploded in 2021.

The feature, available to iOS users of the company’s Twitter Blue subscription service, connects their Twitter accounts to cryptocurrency wallets where users store NFTs.

Twitter, therefore, seems to be trying to take advantage of the wave of NFTs, a market that could reach $80 billion by 2025 according to Jefferies.

However, the new feature received a mixed reception. Critics point in particular to the lack of decentralisation, as the six cryptocurrency wallets supported by Twitter’s NFT feature are backed by a small group of venture capitalists.

Elon Musk, the boss of electric vehicle maker Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA), also reacted negatively to Twitter’s announcements. In a tweet using an image posted by Twitter, Musk commented, “This is annoying”, then responding to his own tweet, wrote, “Twitter is spending engineering resources on this bs while crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block party in every thread!?”.

Readers may recall that Twitter took action last year against cryptocurrency scams with a series of actions intended to strengthen efforts to combat spam and “malicious automation” on its platform. These included security measures, enhanced account verification and registration, conducting a historical audit to identify spammers who registered when its systems were more lax, and taking a more proactive approach to identifying spam activity to reduce their ability to have an impact.

However, it is clear that Twitter remains a privileged vector for the dissemination of scams related to cryptocurrencies, as Elon Musk pointed out.