Users say X is increasingly showing malicious crypto ads, including links to crypto drainers, fake airdrops, and Telegram channels promoting pump and dumps
Cybercriminals are abusing X advertisements to promote websites that lead to crypto drainers, fake airdrops, and other scams.
Context & Ripple Effects
The report follows December coverage that identified Google and X ads directing users to MS Drainer sites and separate reports of crypto-account impersonation on X used to distribute fraudulent links. Together, the coverage shows attackers combining paid distribution with familiar crypto social-engineering lures.
Telegram is part of the reported conversion path: ads can send users from a mainstream platform into channels promoting pump-and-dump schemes, where moderation and attribution can be harder for users to assess.
First-order effects
- X users exposed to these ads face an immediate risk of being routed to wallet-draining sites, fake airdrops, or coordinated trading scams.
- The reports put X’s ad-review and enforcement controls under sharper scrutiny, particularly for crypto promotions that use paid placement to gain credibility.
Second-order effects
- Crypto brands and legitimate advertisers may face greater user skepticism when impersonation and malicious paid ads appear alongside genuine promotions.
- Scammers can shift victims across platforms—from X ads to Telegram channels—making takedown efforts dependent on coordination across the advertising, social, and messaging layers.
Third-order effects
- If paid social inventory remains a reliable acquisition channel for crypto fraud, platform trust and ad-safety controls become a larger part of the crypto sector’s legitimacy and consumer-protection problem.
- The pattern favors fraud operations that distribute risk across ad accounts, landing pages, and messaging communities; durable mitigation would require disruption across that chain rather than isolated content removals.
The trend: Crypto scams are increasingly using mainstream ad platforms for reach and messaging communities for conversion, widening the gap between crypto promotion and consumer trust.