Binance’s CEO Highlights High Rate of Impersonation on Social Media

Quick Take:

• The impersonation of crypto figures and companies on social media is growing
• These impersonations have exacerbated crimes linked to digital currencies
• Innovators are working on decentralized social media as an alternative

Since crypto became a thing, stakeholders in the industry have taken to social media platforms to connect with their audience. Trading platforms and other service providers maintain an identity on social media for easy communication, publicity, and for important updates. 

While the intentions of social media use are noble, the lack of a proper vetting system for social platforms is fueling the growth of scammers. Taking to Twitter, Binance CEO, Changpeng Zhao said;

‘LinkedIn has 7000 profiles of "Binance employees", of which only 50 or so are real…’

The crypto figure made this comment in response to a similar allegation from Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum. Vitalik said Instagram accounts that are in his name are more than 5000 and has distanced himself from the activities from these accounts.

The complaint from these crypto figures is overdue. A lot of crypto investors have fallen victim to scams perpetrated through social media, and this impersonation trend seems overlooked by the social media giants in question.

Proposed Solutions to Social Fraudsters

While the implementation of tighter verification systems is a recommended option, Changpeng Zhao wants LinkedIn to enable a feature that can help companies verify their staff. 

This approach may work to prevent some of the scams linked to social media, but may not solve some of the other privacy and data breach issues that are common today. 

Many crypto innovators have proposed debuting a decentralized social media platform and there has been ongoing work in this regard.

The Lens Protocol, a potential decentralized social media platform from Aave’s founder Stani Kulechov is one of the platforms that seeks to contend with legacy social platforms. 

Lens Protocol’s development has been slow-paced, however, it remains one of the more popular potential solutions.  Decentralized innovations are still fragile when it comes to security, but the belief is that with constant improvements, they can pose a formidable alternative to their centralized counterparts.