'Yikes': Elon Musk Reacts To His Deepfake Avatar Promoting BitVex Crypto Scam In Viral Video

The viral video claimed that the dubious BitVex trading platform is owned by Musk himself, promising 30 percent returns to investors.

Elon Musk is a staunch supporter of cryptocurrencies, especially Dogecoin.

Source : Getty

Crypto awareness is slowly growing among investors around the world. However, along with it, crypto scams and rug-pulls are also becoming prevalent, duping investors off millions. As per the latest Chainalysis Crypto Crime report, crypto-based scams wiped over $7.7 billion from investors in 2021 alone. Fake celebrity endorsements, fuelled by deepfake videos, are increasingly becoming a matter of concern for investors and celebrities alike. Recently, a viral deepfake video showed billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk promoting BitVex, a crypto trading platform that claims to be owned by the Tesla CEO himself, promising a 30 percent return on Bitcoin deposits.

Earlier this week, Twitter user DogeDesigner (@cb_doge) shared the clip, saying “Elon Musk's deep fake video promoting a new cryptocurrency scam going viral. The video claims that the trading platform is owned by Elon Musk, and offers 30 percent returns on crypto deposits.”

The user also tagged Musk on the post. To this, he replied, “Yikes. Def not me.”

Yikes. Def not me.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 25, 2022

As far as deepfakes go, this wasn’t a particularly well-produced one. Musk’s movements and facial expressions are visibly choppy, along with the audio, which sounded more like a machine-generated tone than a regular human voice.

Even Billy Markus, the Dogecoin co-creator who goes by the pseudonym Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) on Twitter, didn’t mince his words while commenting on the post. “Someone stupid enough to invest in that deserves to lose their money, but at the same time the scammers deserve to spend their life in jail,” Markus wrote.

At the time of writing, BitVex’ official website was found to be inaccessible, which could be a result of more and more users flagging the deepfake video on social media platforms.