Paraguay’s Bitcoin Announcement in Question
The office of Paraguayan President Santiago Peña has seemingly refuted a post on social media platform X that suggested the country would start recognizing Bitcoin as a legal currency.
In a post on X from the official Presidential Office on Monday, they advised followers to “reject recently published content” that lacked confirmation from their office.
This statement followed shortly after Peña’s personal account on X claimed that Paraguay had made Bitcoin (BTC) a legal currency, with a reserve valued at $5 million, and even offered investors a wallet address for their stakes.
As of now, Peña’s personal posts have been taken down, but the governmental announcements remain on the platform. The president’s office stated they aim to collaborate with social media platforms to “clear the situation” and urge the public to rely only on information from official sources.
The reported announcement echoed the actions taken by El Salvador, which adopted Bitcoin as a reserve asset. El Salvador, led by President Nayib Bukele, began treating certain cryptocurrencies as fiat currency in 2021, but this status is a bit murky due to a deal with the International Monetary Fund announced in December 2024.
Hackers and Fraud on Social Media
Even before Elon Musk acquired X, following his purchase of Twitter in 2022, numerous hackers were already exploiting social media to perpetrate fraud, particularly in the cryptocurrency space, by hijacking accounts of celebrities and politicians. Notably, they breached the Twitter account of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2021, falsely announcing that India had adopted Bitcoin as its fiat currency.
Recently, a hacker in the U.S. accessed the Securities and Exchange Commission’s account on X through a SIM swap attack, incorrectly stating that the agency had disapproved a list of Spot BTC Exchange-Traded Funds and transactions. The individual, Eric Council Jr., was arrested and sentenced to 14 months in prison for his involvement in this scheme.
