Vitalik Buterin

3 October 2018

Fake Instagram account @buterin_vitalik with 24,000 followers collects 37.491 ETH (~$7,500 at the time) via a fake giveaway directing victims through a Telegram bot.

10 July 2020

CoinDesk reports that crypto giveaway scams impersonating Buterin and other figures are flourishing on YouTube, constituting an established multi-year threat vector.

4 January 2022

A fraudulent Instagram account using the handle @vitalik.eth accumulates over 570,000 followers and runs sponsored paid advertisements to promote staking scams.

18 February 2022

Group-IB documents 36 fabricated YouTube giveaway livestreams using Buterin footage over a 48-hour window; scammer wallets receive over $1.6 million in 281 transactions from more than 165,000 viewers.

15 August 2022

Vitalik Buterin publicly warns via his Twitter account that all 5,000+ Instagram accounts claiming to be him are fake and constitute scams.

2022

Attacker compromises verified journalist Aaron Goldfarb's Twitter account, redesigns it to impersonate Vitalik Buterin, and uses it to launch phishing campaigns targeting followers.

9 September 2023

Attacker SIM-swaps Buterin's T-Mobile number, resets his X account password, and posts a phishing link for a fake 'Proto-Danksharding commemorative NFT.' ZachXBT tracks losses reaching ~$691,000, including CryptoPunk #3983 (~$244,000). Attack wallet is linked to Pink Drainer.

12 September 2023

Buterin confirms publicly via Farcaster that the attack was a SIM swap via T-Mobile, and advises users to remove phone numbers from X account settings.

7 February 2024

CertiK discloses a deepfake video falsely depicting Buterin endorsing a wallet-drainer phishing site, marking an escalation from text-based impersonation to synthetic AI-generated video.

August 2024

Buterin publicly highlights the threat of AI deepfakes to identity verification, noting the increasing difficulty of distinguishing authentic from synthetic video content.

2025

Reports indicate AI-generated deepfake impersonation videos of Buterin and other crypto figures surged 500 percent year-on-year, with $5 million attributed to deepfake crypto scam operations in Q2 2024 alone.