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Scammers Boost BSV Price With Fake Satoshi Confirmation

Scammers boosted the price of bitcoin SV with a fake news alert purporting to show BSV's creator is also bitcoin's.

The OCC warned consumers not to respond to scammers seeking their bitcoin wallet keys.
The OCC warned consumers not to respond to scammers seeking their bitcoin wallet keys.

Scammers boosted the price of Bitcoin SV (BSV) Wednesday by publishing a fake news alert purporting to show that BSV's creator is also bitcoin's.

Masquerading as the Chinese news site Coinbull, the bogus alert claimed that Craig Wright had transferred bitcoin (BTC) from the so-called Satoshi wallets to prove his identity.

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The result? A $60 boost in the bitcoin SV price in less than 10 hours.

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Wright, who led the fork that created BSV in November 2018, has maintained for years that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous architect of bitcoin, but his claims continue to be met with widespread skepticism.

If he really were Satoshi, many critics have said, then Wright should control the private keys to the wallets that mined the first bitcoin – and thus needs only to move some of those coins to settle the matter.

Hence, the "alert" read:

CSW transferred 50k BTC from the biggest BTC wallet to Binance, which confirmed he is the real Satoshi. As such CZ will re-list BSV and make an official apology on Twitter.
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These scams are common – and lucrative.

"The trick is easy and constantly used by many scams – all Chinese crypto media circulate the breaking news via picture as above in WeChat instead of a news link. So anybody can just use the same theme template and photoshop one," said Dovey Wan, founding partner at Primitive Ventures.

Coinbull responded on WeChat with its own announcement, writing:

Coinbull announcement: regarding recent malicious photoshopped image to impersonate Coinbull to spread rumors.





Recently, we have received feedback from users that certain people had maliciously sent out photoshopped Coinbull news alert to spread rumors about Binance and CSW which had bad consequences. We remind our users again not to trust any rumors and not to spread any rumors. Thank you for your support.”

BSV hit a $193.07 seven-day high on the rumor and is leveling out at about $180 as of this writing.

Image via Shutterstock

John Biggs

John Biggs is an entrepreneur, consultant, writer, and maker. He spent fifteen years as an editor for Gizmodo, CrunchGear, and TechCrunch and has a deep background in hardware startups, 3D printing, and blockchain. His work has appeared in Men’s Health, Wired, and the New York Times. He runs the Technotopia podcast about a better future. He has written five books including the best book on blogging, Bloggers Boot Camp, and a book about the most expensive timepiece ever made, Marie Antoinette’s Watch. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

Picture of CoinDesk author John Biggs