Twitter locks your account if you change your display name to Elon Musk

In an effort to curb the cryptocurrency “giveaway” scam epidemic, Twitter will lock your account if you are not verified and change you display name to Elon Musk.

Crypto-scammers and blockchain bandits are on the rise, and they will try anything to swindle unwitting victims into sending or wiring them funds – including pretending to be Musk himself .

Twitter is growing tired of the ever-increasing number of bots programmed to obscure their true identity and peddle fraudulent giveaway links. Typically, these bots will pose as Musk (or other crypto-celebs ) and reply to legitimate tweets from the Tesla top dog, so they look like genuine replies. As ever, the bots promise a swift rise to riches involving some kind of cryptocurrency. Of course, none of that is true.

Blocking your account when you change your name to Musk’s is not a water tight fix. So long as you can verify your account with a phone number and get through the captcha, you can regain access to your account and have your display name as anything you please.

In a statement to The Verge , a Twitter spokesperson said, “As part of our continuing efforts to combat spam and malicious activity on our service, we’re testing new measures to challenge accounts that use terms commonly associated with spam campaigns. We are continually refining these detections based on changes in spammy activity.”

To anyone savvy in tech or online fraud, you’ll probably notice a reduction of sorts in the spammy tweets pretending to be Elon, but you probably weren’t being caught out anyway. To those less savvy though, it hopefully should lessen the number of instances where unwitting victims are drawn into illegitimate offers of potential riches.

In the meantime, stay alert and remember: even seemingly trustworthy accounts might be out to get you .

Facebook is hiring engineers and researchers for its blockchain team

It seems Facebook is looking to step up its “ decentralization ” efforts. The social media giant is currently recruiting blockchain engineers and researchers.

Facebook wants to add a data scientist, a data engineer, and a couple of software engineers to its growing blockchain team, according to its careers page ( via SludgeFeed).

“ The blockchain team is a startup within Facebook, with a vision to make blockchain technology work at Facebook scale,” the ads say. “It’s a small, fast-growing, but talented group of people who are passionate about changing the world. “

In addition, the company is also hiring a product marketing lead to manage the project. “ Our blockchain team is fundamental to that mission and we are seeking an experienced leader to build and manage a new product marketing team focused in exploring the opportunity the blockchain will bring,” Facebook says in the job description.

Facebook on the blockchain?

Considering that earlier this year the social media titan set up a whole team to explore blockchain use cases, today’s news shouldn’t come as a surprise.

Indeed, the company reportedly already had a dozen people working on blockchain and cryptocurrency tech back in May. The effort was led by former Messenger lead, David Marcus, who previously held a role as a board member at Coinbase .

Rumors of Facebook‘s interest in decentralized frameworks first began circulating after CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested he believes blockchain and cryptocurrency tech has the potential to “ take power from centralized systems and put it back into people’s hands .”

It remains to be seen what Facebook can do with the technology. But factoring in the regulatory uncertainties surrounding blockchain and cryptocurrency, chances are the company will take its time – or bet on a private blockchain like other corporates have done.

85% of employees at recently launched blockchain startups are male

At this point, gender inequality in tech is well documented . As it turns out, the blockchain industry is absolutely no different – there is a staggeringly disproportionate amount of males employed by the next wave of cryptocurrency companies.

Recent analysis discovered men comprised an overwhelming majority of recent blockchain startups – just 14.5 percent of team members are women, reports blockchain data firm LongHash.

Even worse, female executives are in charge of just seven percent of these recently founded cryptocurrency companies. For advisors, the number is just one tick higher, at roughly eight percent.

More than 1,000 listed team members hailing from 100 recently founded blockchain companies were analyzed to determine their gender balance.

In addition to their general staff, 326 founders (including “C-Grade” executives), and 473 members of related advisory boards were also recorded.

The data indicated 85.5 percent of the workforce employed by these cryptocurrency-related startups are male, and 78 percent had not hired a single female executive.

Out of the 100 analyzed companies, 37 employed no females whatsoever, in any capacity.

Even the new advisory roles are mostly female-free, with 75 percent completely male. LongHash noted if they removed two outlying startups with large advisory boards made up of 25 percent women, the overall account for women in these roles sank to below six percent.

This news corroborates other survey results related to the cryptocurrency industry. Associated research published by Circle found millennial men were twice as likely to invest in digital assets as their female counterparts.

Earlier this year, data collected by eToro revealed not even nine percent of cryptocurrency users are female . Not to mention, a similarly small percentage of social media engagements sent within cryptocurrency communities are coming from females.

In a bid to bridge their own extreme gender imbalance, Switzerland’s Crypto Valley Association actually mandated the inclusion of two new female board members, even if it had to increase its board from five members to seven.

It’s unknown whether this new wave of blockchain businesses will feel inspired to do the same thing, now that the cat is out of the bag. At this rate, it certainly doesn’t look good.