Stacy Pereira
A now-deleted tweet from Paraguay’s President, Santiago Pena, stating that the South American nation was recognizing Bitcoin as a legal tender, sent the crypto community into a tizzy. Twitter users were quick to respond, questioning whether the President’s account was hacked.
Government confirms X account hacked
A statement by Paraguay’s government cleared those doubts when it said that the account had witnessed “irregular activity which suggests possible unauthorized entry.” A few hours later, President Pena gained control of his X account and put out another tweet. He thanked Paraguay’s Cyber Incident Response Team and the X team for their quick response. He emphasized how such cybersecurity breaches should push us towards a more resilient digital ecosystem.
The post by President Pena’s account was in English and was accompanied by a Spanish-language statement purporting to be from the government. It declared that the Latin American country had made Bitcoin legal tender and that it would roll out a $5 million Bitcoin-backed reserve fund. The statement also said that the government would launch a bond program for “crypto-enabled citizens.”
The post also urged users to send any amount of Bitcoin to a wallet address, as that would determine the scale of a national rollout. But since the activity was flagged off as suspicious, the wallet address provided by the hacker had only $4 in it and had recorded no transactions since the announcement. The government has urged people to be cautious when sharing such post.
This hack also looks similar to breaches into other famous people’s accounts to target crypto fans, urging them to send money to fake crypto wallets.
