Scam Twitch Stream Pretending To Be Elon Musk

Scam Twitch streams impersonating Elon Musk are taking over the website’s Just Chatting section, advertising bitcoin giveaways with clips from the Tesla founder’s prior comments on the popular cryptocurrency.

As the popularity of various cryptocurrencies grows, nefarious blockchain users offer fake giveaways of the most popular token. These users may be able to acquire access to the winner’s wallet in order to drain any valuable assets. Bitcoin ‘giveaway’ streams began rapidly surfacing on Twitch in November 2020, utilizing outdated Elon Musk video and botted viewers to climb to the top of the Just Chatting category.

The streams were soon removed from the platform, but they would reappearance with a new account practically immediately. Those bogus Twitch streams have reappeared, attracting over 10,000 viewers before being promptly shut down. These accounts immediately attracted the attention of actual viewers who wanted to know what was going on, thanks to the account’s use of thousands of botted viewers to rise to the top of the category. After complaints of botted accounts surfaced on April 13, Twitch proceeded quickly to ban them. New accounts, on the other hand, were swiftly generated and pushed to the top of the “Just Chatting” category.

The channel names were simply ‘elon musk’ followed by a sequence of arbitrary integers. Fortunately, the botted accounts appear to have vanished – at least for the time being. It’s worth noting that Elon Musk does not have his own Twitch account at the time of writing. If he made one, it would almost certainly have the platform’s desired partner checkmark next to his name. 

This isn’t the first time the Tesla founder’s face has been used with phony giveaways, given his prominence in the cryptocurrency sector and his status as one of the world’s wealthiest men. Musk’s, MrBeast’s, and other high-profile Twitter accounts were hacked in July 2020, and the hackers utilized them to host bogus crypto giveaways.