Early on Monday, CCN brought to light the misadventures of an insidious scammer pretending to be none other than the Bitcoin renegade himself, John McAfee.
McAfee: Twitter Never Even Responds to My Crypto Scam Reports
After we tipped off McAfee and his wife, Janice, to the fraudulent article in question, John responded by sharing his frustration with an issue that continues to plague the crypto community at large: Twitter bitcoin scams.
Speaking with CCN, McAfee said:
“This happens three or four times a day where people pretending to be me on various platforms, attempt to scam people using a variety of scams.”
“On my Twitter account everyone of my tweets are peppered with comments from people pretending to be me and attempting to get people to send Bitcoin or Ethereum in exchange for a larger amount. I no longer bother to report them to Twitter because I never get a response.”
Twitter has the paradoxical reputation of being both incredibly resourceful and annoyingly frustrating. Influencers find it increasingly difficult to wade through the information swamp only to interact with their genuine followers.
Calls Grow Louder For an End to Twitter Bitcoin Scams
Popular tweets have a long history of scammy responders. By now you’d think they’d have nipped the issue in the bud. It’s been more than a year since CEO Jack Dorsey promised to tackle the problem quickly.
If anything, the situation has actually become worse. CNBC Crypto Trader host Ran Neuner recently echoed McAfee’s sentiment by calling Dorsey out for wasting resources developing a controversial new user interface while these scams continue to exploit novice crypto users.
Hey @jack , instead of giving us a new UI that is worse than the previous one, can you not use the resources to fix this very simple problem? pic.twitter.com/jm85NA8q62
— Ran NeuNer (@cryptomanran) July 28, 2019
For now, Twitter holds the crown as the undisputed king of short-form content. But what if a serious scam-resistant contender ever comes along? Well, it won’t take much for major influencers like Mr. Renegade himself to jump ship.