Users on social media have shared screenshots of a notification message apparently sent by Blockfolio, a “network for mobile cryptocurrency portfolio tracking and management,” that included a racial slur. These posts are missing context: the messages were sent after an unattended account of the marketing team was used by an unauthorized party.
Some posts with screenshots can be seen here , here , and here .
As reported by Coindesk ( here) and Newsweek (here ), the racist messages were displayed in the early hours of Feb. 9 via Blockfolio’s app.
Later the same day, the company apologized for the offensive messages via Twitter here and said “no funds/etc. were affected” and that they had “revoked access to the compromised Signal submitter and removed the messages.”
Sam Bankman-Fried, CEO of the FTX exchange ( t.co/KHRZV62Xku?amp=1 ) that owns Blockfolio, said on Twitter ( here ) that the racist messages were “produced and published by a competitor exchange of ours who maliciously gained access to someone else’s Blockfolio News/Signal capabilities”.
Bankman-Fried reiterated to Reuters via email that “a Blockfolio employee left their account unattended, and an outside 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,” and said they were increasing security around this function.
Edward Moncada, Blockfolio co-founder, also said a corporate “marketing account” was compromised here .
VERDICT
Missing context. According to company representatives, offensive messages displayed by the Blockfolio app were sent from a compromised account.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our work to fact-check social media posts here .
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