Tesla Inc. (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk chided social media company Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) over the introduction of verified non fungible token profile pictures on its platform in a series of tweets on Friday.
What Happened: "This is annoying," Musk said, sharing a screenshot of Twitter's announcement of the news, adding he couldn't believe "Twitter is spending engineering resources on this bs while crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block party in every thread!?"
Twitter is spending engineering resources on this bs while crypto scammers are throwing a spambot block party in every thread!?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 21, 2022
See Also: HOW TO CHANGE YOUR TWITTER PROFILE PICTURE TO A VERIFIED NFT
Why It Matters: Twitter introduced the feature, which had been announced months earlier, on Thursday. Hashtags such as #NewNFTProfilePic and #twitterdown trended in the aftermath as the feature reportedly found widespread popularity.
Musk's comment comes in the context that cryptocurrency scams have been widespread over the years on Twitter.
Verified profiles, carrying blue check marks, are often hacked with the display names changed to resemble that of influencers like Musk or Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) co-founder Vitalik Buterin — and then used to promote scams.
The scammers typically ask Twitter users to send cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC), Ethereum or Dogecoin (CRYPTO: DOGE) to specific wallet addresses, promising to multiply their investments and return.
Musk isn't the only one criticizing Twitter over the move. Bitcoin developer Peter Todd earlier chided Twitter over centralization concerns with the move.
"OpenSea is too cheap to run their own Ethereum node as well, so they outsource that to Infura, who in turn is too cheap to own their own hardware, so they outsource that to Amazon. Centralization inception. Just lol."
— Peter Todd (@peterktodd) January 21, 2022
https://t.co/w5d8xVjbZe
Price Action: Twitter shares traded 0.75% lower in the pre-market session at $37 on Friday.
Photo: Courtesy of Steve Jurvetson via Flickr
