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In an industry which largely depends on social and online platforms for developments and announcements, personal identities and credentials matter. The recent case of Binance makes this more evident.
According to a recent segment aired by BlockTV, Binance is facing some trouble after allegations about a number of impersonators who were reported to be working for the Malta-based exchange broke out.
The fake profiles and representatives, surprisingly, extended not only to Twitter, but to popular website LinkedIn as well.
Binance, the largest exchange by volume in the industry, had exactly 642 employees on its pay-roll, at press time. However, after conducting a thorough search through LinkedIn, the number was found to be almost three times the actual number, around 1600 employees. For instance, a fake profile by the name of George Griffin was discovered, with the man behind the profile claiming to be an Executive Director at Binance Corporation, well before Binance was even launched.
Twitter user @jason_yanowitz recently shared a tweet about the number of present employees at large crypto-associations across the globe, a list which Binance topped with 1,635. The data was sourced out of LinkedIn, with Changpeng Zhao, CEO of Binance, responding to the statistics. He said,
“Scammers impersonating Binance team on LinkedIn: 1,500+
Binance actual team size: 600
Binance teams that actually have a profile on LinkedIn: 30
Welcome to #Crypto & LinkedIn”
The situation is similar to the one which took over Twitter a while back, an instance where scammers promised free crypto coins or tokens to their followers.
The massive creation of such fake profiles can significantly impact the brand value of reputed crypto-exchanges in the eyes of potential new users. It also affects the targeted exchange’s credentials and a sense of uncertainty clouds their position in the market.
However, Binance has claimed that these fake profiles have had little impact on the exchange’s operation as it has internal channels to verify any employee’s indentity.
We have reached out to Binance for a comment on the story.