Crypto Giveaway Scam: Using Microstrategy CEO to Steal From Hopeful Hodlers

TLDR; Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor is NOT giving away BTC and ETH.

But these scams are so profitable, they are now taking out full 90 second ads on YouTube in order to draw hopeful hodlers to the invest-saylor.com and ms-x2.net websites.  One ad used a blurred video of a Michael Saylor impersonator and a QR code to draw people to the website.  Another ad was an AI generated imitation of Michael Saylor.

Why is YouTube allowing these SCAM ads?

According to details on the site, each hodler of the digital asset has a chance to receive double the amount of Bitcoin and Ethereum by joining the “BIGGEST CRYPTO GIVEAWAY OF $100 000 000”.  But no, MicroStrategy isn’t giving away any of its Bitcoins and doesn’t even hold Ethereum.

The site also includes a portrait of Microstrategy CEO Michael Saylor as well as the brand emblem to make it more trustworthy.

An impersonator of Michael Saylor took more than $4 million from victims in a gifting scam. The format of that scam seemed similar and the tagline showed less difference: “ Hurry up and take part in the giveaway of 5000 BTC.” The only difference is the amount promised.

Long History of Scams

Despite the fact that Bitcoin’s global adoption has increased in recent years, there are still a lot of roadblocks in the way of public acceptance.

Unlike traditional money transactions, which must go through an intermediary and incur various service fees, Bitcoin transactions can be made directly between participants at no cost.

The unusual behavior has resulted in civil, commercial, and criminal lawsuits based on fraud and the misappropriation of millions of dollars in actual money.

Scammers frequently imitate celebrities, such as Michael Saylor, and then request that the user donate bitcoins to a certain address. To generate trust, they offer to double the amount of cryptocurrency that investors deposit.

MicroStrategy’s CEO, Saylor, is a huge advocate of cryptocurrency and we applaud his dedication.  It is sad to see scams like invest-saylor.com impersonating Michael Saylor.

MicroStrategy has purchased up to 114,042 BTC since August, making it the highest Bitcoin holding of any publicly traded business. At current market prices, the holdings are worth more than $6.57 billion.

The authoritative DNS server responded with these DNS records for the invest-saylor.com website. It has indicated that records should be cached for the period specified by the time to live (TTL). When the configuration of the authoritative DNS server changes, it will immediately serve the updated DNS records.