X Wants to Lock Accounts for Their First Crypto Post

Nikita Bier, Head of Product at X, recently wrote that his team is working on a new anti-crypto-scam feature.

The idea is simple: the first time an account posts about cryptocurrency, it gets locked. To unlock it, the user must complete identity verification.

According to Bier, this could prevent up to 99% of scams - especially those where attackers take over ordinary accounts and start posting crypto-related fraud (giveaways, "investment opportunities", and so on).

Fair enough. Presumably, the X team has data showing that 99% of scam posts about crypto were the first-ever crypto-related posts from those accounts.

But what about the other side of that statistic?

Ever since Hal Finney’s "Running Bitcoin" - the very first crypto-related tweet - the number of people discovering crypto has only grown. Governments and banks are, in many ways, nudging people in that direction by making traditional financial systems less convenient. And a large share of these newcomers will, sooner or later, make their first crypto-related post on X.

How many of those first posts are actually scams?

If Nikita Bier can estimate how many attacks this system will prevent, perhaps he can also share an estimate of its false positive rate.

Imagine this: you post something about XMR, and immediately get asked to verify your identity just to keep using X. Sounds a bit absurd, doesn’t it?

Until this system is rolled out, there’s still a simple way to stay on the safe side. If you’ve never posted about crypto on X before, make your first post now - before the locks go live.

For example, you could share which cryptocurrency you’d like to be able to swap on rabbit.io.