1 August 2026
Bitcoin scammers gained $2 million from Elon Musk’s Fake Vanity Bitcoin Addresses
Bitcoin scammers have received over $2 million by using the name of SpaceX and Tesla CEO Elon Musk in the past two months.
As per the report by ZDNet, sophisticated vanity addresses are used by scammers to trick bitcoin users into their trap.
The bitcoin addresses use the name of the tech billionaire Elon Musk as initial strings to get credibility from the potential victims. Two addresses are been disclosed- 1MuskPsV7BnuvMuHGWmmXUyXKjxp3vLZX6 and 1ELonMUsKZzpVr5Xok8abiXhhqGbdrnK5C.
These were tracked down by Justin Lister, CEO of cyber-security firm Adaptiv along with BitcoinAbuse, a website collecting the Bitcoin fraud addresses from the victims fallen for extortions, ransomware, scams, and cybercrimes.
According to a security company, there are 66 such addresses that are misusing Musk’s name and reputation to earn bitcoins. Currently, there are 67 Bitcoin vanity addresses published on BitcoinAbuse.
The Bitcoins amount these addresses hold is 214 BTC that worth over $2 million. The amount is huge compared to the efforts took to pull such scams.
The report states that the source of most of the bitcoins came through YouTube live stream giveaways where scammers imitated an existing channel with massive followers. The channel was running an interview with the celebrity and announced a Bitcoin “giveaway”, where scammers asked the victim to send a small number of Bitcoins to the provided addresses to receive double or triple the amount.
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