Lately a scam linked to an unlikely bitcoin giveaway apparently proposed by Elon Musk is circulating on YouTube.
Unfortunately, it’s a scam that is achieving significant results, to the point that several mainstream newspapers have also covered it, in an attempt to make as many people as possible aware of its existence.
Indeed, after the successful launch of the Crew Dragon by SpaceX, of which Musk is the founder, the visibility of the famous American serial entrepreneur has increased to the point of attracting a lot of interest also from the masses.
The problem originates precisely from the fact that some fake profiles pretending to be Elon Musk have taken advantage of his huge visibility in this period to promote a fake bitcoin giveaway.
For example, on Twitter, one of these fake Elon Musk wrote that to celebrate the success of the launch he decided to do something special, the biggest bitcoin giveaway in the world.
Something very similar is proposed on YouTube, often with fake live videos.
The scam consists in convincing the unlucky ones to send between 0.1 and 2 BTC to a specific address, in exchange for the promise to receive back from 1 to 20, that is ten times as much. Or to send 5 BTC or 100 ETH to get a Tesla Model S Performance as a reward.
Although it’s easy to guess that this is a scam, many people fell for it because they were convinced that it was really Elon Musk himself who presented this special opportunity.
In addition, pressure is usually put on the victim by showing a fast closing countdown, which would allow little time to decide.
In reality, it’s all fake and it’s only used to show the address to send the BTC to and convince the victim to do it.
The fact that it’s obviously a fake clearly emerges from one detail. The website with the countdown and the public address to send the BTC to, says that it is possible to participate only once in this giveaway.
Since bitcoin wallets are anonymous and one can have as many as desired, it is absolutely impossible to trace the sender of a transaction. Therefore for those who claim that it would not be possible to participate twice, it is actually impossible to understand whether two different transactions from two different wallets were made by the same person.
In other words, it is absolutely not true that it would not be possible to participate more than once.
Although it is quite clear that this is an attempt at fraud, the time pressure placed on the victims and a certain amount of naivety, unfortunately, mean that these crimes continue to be perpetrated successfully.
We must not forget that every time someone promises big profits, easy, quick and effortless, it is absolutely necessary to doubt, because most of the time it is just an attempt at fraud.
