Elon Musk’s Fake Vanity Bitcoin Addresses Receive $2 Million

Bitcoin Bitcoin While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that While some may still be wondering what is Bitcoin, who created Bitcoin, or how does Bitcoin work, one thing is certain: Bitcoin has changed the world.No one can remain indifferent to this revolutionary, decentralized, digital asset nor to its blockchain technology.In fact, we’ve gone a long way ever since a Florida resident Laszlo Hanyecz made BTC’s first official commercial transaction with a real company by trading 10,000 Bitcoins for 2 pizzas at his local Papa John’s.One could now argue that Read this Term scammers have netted over $2 million in the past two months using the name of SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Reported by ZDNet last week, scammers are now using sophisticated vanity addresses to lure the cautious Bitcoin users into their trap.

These addresses use the name of the tech billionaire as initial strings to get credibility from the potential victims. Two of the involved addresses are 1MuskPsV7BnuvMuHGWmmXUyXKjxp3vLZX6 and 1ELonMUsKZzpVr5Xok8abiXhhqGbdrnK5C.

The fraud stats were tracked by Justin Lister, CEO of Cybersecurity Cybersecurity Cybersecurity is a blanket term that refers to the protection of computer systems and networks from the theft.More broadly speaking, cybersecurity can also represent countermeasures against damage to hardware, software, or electronic data, as well as from the disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.It was not long ago that the term cybersecurity not exist as it was first used in 1989. In today’s vernacular cybersecurity, refers to measures taken to protect a computer or computer Cybersecurity is a blanket term that refers to the protection of computer systems and networks from the theft.More broadly speaking, cybersecurity can also represent countermeasures against damage to hardware, software, or electronic data, as well as from the disruption or misdirection of the services they provide.It was not long ago that the term cybersecurity not exist as it was first used in 1989. In today’s vernacular cybersecurity, refers to measures taken to protect a computer or computer Read this Term firm Adaptiv, with the help of BitcoinAbuse, a website collecting the Bitcoin fraud addresses from the victims fallen for extortions, ransomware, scams, and cybercrimes.

The security company has found 66 such addresses exploiting Musk’s name and reputation to receive Bitcoins, but as of press time, there are 67 Bitcoin vanity addresses listed on BitcoinAbuse.

These address together hold 214 Bitcoins with a current market value of over $2 million. This amount is massive compared to the efforts took to pull such scams.

Scammers are getting sophisticated

The report detailed that most of these Bitcoins were collected from YouTube live stream giveaways where the scammers sophisticatedly impersonate an existing channel with massive followers. These channels run a long interview or discussion with the celebrity and announce a Bitcoin “giveaway”, asking the potential victims to send a small number of Bitcoins to the provided addresses to receive double or triple the amount.

111K people are watching a fake @SONY @PlayStation 5 Livestream on @YouTube designed to steal people's Bitcoins by promising to double it.https://t.co/t906Orlruq Address shows no transactions so far. https://t.co/NmA9Co9EeU How the hell does this go "under" YouTube's radar? pic.twitter.com/YXrIrFWmFK

— Oo Nwoye (@OoTheNigerian) June 12, 2020

Scammers are running such scams for years, but recently they have turned to be more sophisticated.

Fraudsters have taken advantage of the recent hype of SpaceX advancements for launching astronauts into space to get more attention.

Apart from Musk, these scams also milked from the name of other tech celebrities including Bill Gates and Vitalik Buterin, and they are also tapping users in platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and even TikTok.