169 cryptocurrencies were created following a tweet from Elon Musk. A few hours later, most of them were already worth nothing.
A recent tweet from Elon Musk did not go unnoticed by the crypto community. On Tuesday, in a nod to Halloween (and to the Dogecoin cryptocurrency), the new boss of Twitter posted a photo of a dog wearing a T-shirt bearing the image of the social network. In the aftermath, the cryptocurrency dogecoin jumped 12%, its price having increased in value by 100% in the space of a week.
169 new coins
But this photo was also an opportunity for many smart guys to launch new cryptocurrencies. A total of 169 Twitter-themed cryptocurrencies have appeared on two blockchains: the BNB Smart Chain (BSC) – the blockchain of cryptocurrency giant Binance – and Ethereum.
According to the site specializing in blockchain security PeckShieldAlert, 67 of these cryptocurrency projects have already lost more than 90% of their value, 45 are already worth nothing and 42 were actually “honeypot”, which is none other than a fraudulent cryptocurrency that a user can buy but cannot sell.
It’s not a surprise: these hastily created cryptocurrencies have no other purpose for malicious actors than to make money off the backs of users.
“This resulted in cumulative losses of thousands of dollars among investors who bet on the newly issued tokens in hopes of long-term price appreciation,” news outlet CoinDesk reports.