Paraguay’s President Falls Victim to X Account Hack Promoting Bitcoin Scam - Cryptured.com

The Bitcoin community experienced a brief surge of excitement overnight,following a post from Santiago Peña’s personal X account claiming that the South American country has accepted Bitcoin as legal cash.

The post stated that Paraguay was establishing a $5 million Bitcoin reserve and that “bond access for crypto-enabled citizens” would be available, in addition to making Bitcoin legal tender. They could “secure their stake in Bitcoin now” and then provide a Bitcoin wallet address, the article stated, adding that “your investment today will determine the scale of this rollout.”

Astute readers have already noted that the entire post seems suspicious.

As expected, the message was a fraud, and the president’s personal X/Twitter account had indeed been compromised. Not long after it was uploaded, the scam message was taken down.

The Government of Paraguay Reacts Fast

Minutes after the fraudulent tweet, the president’s official government account posted a message urging followers to “dismiss any recently published content.”

A few hours following the fraudulent post, Peña wrote from his personal account to express gratitude to the X security team and the Paraguay government’s Cyber Incident Response Team for their assistance in resolving the issue:

I express my appreciation to the @CERTpy and @X teams for their quick and professional response to the security incident on my official X account. Cybersecurity is key, and these events show us that we must all contribute to building a safe, reliable, and resilient digital ecosystem.

Santiago Peña, Paraguayan President

A number of Central and South American countries, including Panama, are apparently thinking of adopting Bitcoin as a reserve asset, following El Salvador’s example. This fraudulent post was made around the same time.

Bitcoin was made legal in El Salvador in 2021; however, after the Central American country amended its Bitcoin laws as part of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund in December 2024, the cryptocurrency’s exact legal standing is now a little unclear.