Social media users shared screenshots of a notification message apparently sent by Blockfolio, a “network for tracking and managing cryptocurrency portfolios”, which includes a racial exhaustion. These messages are missing context: the messages were sent after an unauthorized party used an unattended account of the marketing team.
Some screenshot posts can be seen here, here and here.
As reported by Coindesk (here) and Newsweek (here), the racist messages were displayed in the early morning hours of February 9 via Blockfolio’s app.
Later that day, the company apologized for the offensive messages via Twitter here and said “no funds / etc. affected ”and that they“ withdrew access to the indicated Signal submitter and deleted the messages. ”
Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of the FTX exchange (t.co/KHRZV62Xku?amp=1) which owns Blockfolio, said on Twitter ( here ) that the racist messages were “produced and published by a rival exchange between us who maliciously gained access to someone else’s Blockfolio News / Signal capabilities”.
Bankman-Fried reiterated in an email to Reuters that “a Blockfolio employee left their account unattended, and an external party not affiliated with Blockfolio used it to send the messages.”
On Twitter, he added that “we should have had stricter controls on which accounts could push signal updates”, saying they increase security around this feature.
Edward Moncada, co-founder of Blockfolio, also said that a corporate ‘marketing account’ is being compromised here .
VERDICT
Missing context. According to company representatives, offensive messages displayed through the Blockfolio app were sent from a compromised account.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work here to check out social media posts.