When a tweet was made from the Indian Prime Minister’s account announcing his government had adopted Bitcoin and would be distributing the money, his office acknowledged it was “very briefly compromised.”
“The incident was escalated to Twitter, and the account was quickly secured,” the Indian Prime Minister’s office tweeted on Sunday.
“Any Tweet shared during the brief period while the account was compromised must be ignored,” officials warned.
According to CNN’s station News-18, several Twitter users’ uploaded screenshots of the tweet sent from the Indian Prime Minister’s personal Twitter account, @narendramodi, when it was hacked.
The following was taken from the screenshot: “India has declared bitcoin to be legal tender. The government has purchased 500 Bitcoins and will “distribute them to all citizens of the country.””
That tweet has since been removed from the internet. A probable fraud link was also included to the tweet.
Modi has more than 70 million Twitter followers, making him one of the most popular world leaders. Bitcoin is not accepted as legal money in India.
El Salvador became the first government in the world to accept Bitcoin as legal payment in September, and the country’s president, Nayib Bukele, announced last month that he plans to establish the world’s first “Bitcoin City” — first funded by Bitcoin-backed bonds.
India has even considered outlawing cryptocurrency recently. Modi’s government announced last month that it was working on a measure that would “prohibit any private cryptocurrencies in India.” However, the bill’s summary states that it would enable “limited exclusions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its applications.”
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