The former Twitter, social media platform X, is actively advertising crypto scams, a Community Note has pointed out on an advert making the rounds on Tuesday. The platform is in such abject chaos that it both actively harms its users and has steps in place for its users to protect themselves from the harm it is causing.

We saw the below advert from METAWIN, a verified organisation on the platform, offering “huge crypto prize competitions.” Apparently, people have won up to $18 million to date through the company’s competitions.

Unfortunately for anyone who does connect their crypto wallet in the hopes of winning prizes, METAWIN is actually a scam and connecting your wallet may get your crypto stolen. According to an article by TechTarget, this type of scam from METAWIN is called a “social media cryptocurrency giveaway scam.”

“When someone clicks on the giveaway, they are taken to a fraudulent site asking for verification to receive the bitcoin. The verification process includes making a payment to prove the account is legitimate,” the publication explains. These scams are common on social media as accounts are spun up just to steal from unsuspecting users who come across them naturally, but for X to be advertising a scam is rare.

There have been other examples of this in the past, such as with fake companies like X Tokens swindling users since November last year.

We saw similar scams being inadvertently advertised by the official X MultiChoice account last year. Just like METAWIN, these scams were also fake crypto competitions and giveaways that led to sites in which user information could be stolen.

X was never the same since billionaire Elon Musk purchased the former Twitter for $44 billion in 2022. In the last two years, the platform has undergone a brand facelift, an advertiser exodus, the launch of a host of new features and more controversial changes to the multi-million-user website.

Mostly, users believe the platform is worse than it was pre-Musk, but there is one feature launched post-Musk that most can agree should stay. Community Notes immediately crush fake news and warn users of misleading information. They point out when companies lie to their customers and have even struck the X owner himself in the past.

With Bitcoin breaking new records, there could be a renewed crypto craze and many could fall to such scams. Unfortunately, Community Notes won’t be there to highlight every scam, but users should keep on the lookout just in case. The onus falls on X to check up on who is buying ads on the platform.