1 October 2026
Bitcoin Scam On YouTube Uses Fake Identity Of Coinbase’s CEO
Scammers hijacked popular YouTube channel and live-streamed ask-me-anything (AMA) with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong.
The 12 hours stream on 6th April was a scam that urges users in sending Bitcoin as a payment for a non-existent 5,000 BTC giveaway.
This YouTube scam followed a format similar to Twitter con, where a fake account imitates a famous crypto or celebrity figure. The fake account of a famous person holds a large amount of Bitcoin or Ether (ETH) to give away. The victims are the urge to send the cryptocurrency to a given address with a promise of a return between two and ten times the amount.
An individual was able to hack down the YouTube channel, TopTenz which has around 1.63 million subscribers. After hacking, the channel was renamed as "CoinbasePRO English."
This channel lives streamed the AMA of old footage of Brian Armstrong answering viewers’ questions.
While the stream was live it also showed a Bitcoin address and QR code, promising users that if they sent bitcoin will get the double amount in return immediately. However, sending bitcoin on this address will lead to the loss of your coins.
As reported by the Blockchain block explorer, the address received only one transaction with 0.44 BTC and that has been promoted through the "giveaway." The displayed address was live for 2 hours and the previous two addresses advertised received 2.548 BTC and 4.209 BTC respectively.
This scam has stolen 7.2 BTC in total that worth $51,200 of the amount.
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