Ethereum Founder Vitalik Buterin pinpointed the importance of cultural awareness and the rise of scams within the cryptocurrency industry on May 30. He cautioned users about the deceptive use of common terms, pointing out that some can have vastly different meanings in crypto compared to other fields.
In a recent post on Farcaster, Buterin argued that understanding the nuances of language is important in the crypto industry.
Vitalik Buterin Argues Against Crypto Industry Nuances
Buterin highlighted a parallel example to illustrate his point: In most European languages, “actual” means “current,” and “concurrency” means “competition.” In the crypto space, “DAO” often means “project,” and “official” can sometimes imply “scam.” The linguistic nuance demonstrates how words can have different meanings depending on the context and cultural background.
These insights from Vitalik Buterin come in the wake of recent scams involving celebrities’ official accounts.
On May 26, scammers targeted the popular crypto influencers Gigantic-Cassocked-Rebirth (GCR) official X account to promote ORDI and Luna 2.0 memecoins, resulting in 6% and 274% temporary price surges, respectively.
The official X accounts of rapper Rich the Kid and media personality Caitlyn Jenner were also compromised, raising further security concerns.
In Rich the Kid’s case, a new token called $RICH was created on the Solana memecoin launchpad pump.fun and promoted on X. Within the first two minutes of the launch, $RICH generated a $90K market cap before dropping off.
Caitlyn Jenner’s account was used to promote a meme coin named $JENNER, which increased the coin’s market capitalization to $22 million, based on aggregated data from Raydium and GeckoTerminal.
$Jenner no deep fakes. All real crypto. $113.5M volume in just over 4 hours.
Trade here: https://t.co/SiYwteBGkv pic. .com/gyobXOddzI— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) May 27, 2024
These launches quickly turned controversial when the teams behind them were accused of scamming, exploiting their subscribers for liquidity, and engaging in inappropriate behavior.
Vitalik Buterin Insights Aligns with US SEC’s Caution Notice
Vitalik Buterin’s recent insights resonate strongly with a cautionary notice issued by the US SEC on May 29.
The SEC’s notice highlighted the dangers associated with making cryptocurrency investment decisions based solely on information obtained from online sources and social media platforms.
The notice reminded investors to be careful and conduct thorough research before making any investment decisions in the cryptocurrency space.
The SEC is not the only regulatory body advising against fraudulent crypto investments. On May 28, Canada warned of rising pig butchering and crypto investment scams targeted at Canadian citizens.