Elon Musk’s X is now locking user accounts the second they post about cryptocurrency for the first time. Users have to verify their identity before they can post again.
The company says it’s going after hackers who break into accounts and use them to push fake investment schemes. Nikita Bier runs product development at X. He said the system triggers whenever an account mentions crypto for the first time ever.
The change “should kill 99% of the incentive” for criminals stealing accounts, according to Bier. He replied under an X post of the victim who got fooled by what looked like a real copyright notice. It was actually a fake login page. After entering their password and security codes, attackers grabbed the accounts, locked them out, and started posting scam promotions.
Account theft like this has been a problem since the platform was still called Twitter. The new lockdown builds on earlier efforts to stop spam networks and organized groups running crypto promotions. Bier also criticized Google. He said the email company isn’t doing anything to stop phishing messages from getting through Gmail. He called the auto-lock a workaround for a problem X can’t fix directly.
Crypto scams drain $6.1 billion as reports surge past 2024 levels
The Federal Trade Commission has been tracking crypto scams on social media. They’ve become a multi-billion-dollar problem. Victims usually can’t get their money back because you can’t reverse blockchain transactions. That’s why stolen accounts with followers are so valuable to criminals.
People trust posts from accounts they recognize. The lockdown breaks that by stopping scammers from using a stolen account immediately. Through the first nine months of 2025, people reported 113,842 investment scams. Total losses hit $6.1 billion. That puts 2025 on pace to beat 2024, when 121,000 scams got reported with $5.8 billion in losses. Scammers grabbed $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency through the third quarter of 2025, according to Moltey Fool. That’s up from $1 billion in the same period of 2024.
Only bank transfers moved more money to criminals. People aged 40 to 49 filed the most reports. They submitted 9,513 of them and lost $366 million total. The typical loss was $7,405. Americans between 30 and 70 face way higher risk than younger or older groups.
Social platforms drive 38% of investment fraud as Google pulls spam protection
Social media was the starting point for 38% of investment scams. That’s more than any other method. Another 17% started on websites or apps. Victims who first got contacted through social media went from 4,889 in 2020 to 26,569 in 2024. Through the third quarter of 2025, there were 20,715 reports. In 2020, just 29% of these scams started on social platforms.
Things might get worse as Google shuts down Gmailify in January 2026. The tool lets people connect Yahoo, AOL, and Outlook accounts to Gmail and use its spam filters. Google’s also stopping the automatic pull of emails from other services into Gmail. Users relying on these features might not notice until spam starts slipping through.
American households lose about $119 billion yearly to digital fraud. That’s according to the Consumer Federation of America. The estimate comes from the FBI’s count of $16.6 billion in reported internet crimes during 2024.
Chainalysis found cryptocurrency scams brought in at least $14 billion in 2025. That’s up from $9.9 billion in 2024. The firm thinks that number could hit $17 billion once they identify more criminal wallets. The average scam payment jumped from $782 in 2024 to $2,764 in 2025. Impersonation scams exploded by 1,400% compared to last year. Average payments went up by over 600%.
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