Grifters and scammers are trying to cash in on the Bondi Beach terrorist attack by launching speculative cryptocurrencies and fake fundraisers, even celebrating when the value of a coin using the likeness of the 10-year-old victim of the mass shooting spiked after launching.
As is typically the case around any major news event, opportunistic people are using various tech platforms to make money from the global attention on Sunday’s antisemitic terrorist attack, which left 16 dead and 40 injured.
On top of the lies and inflammatory content spread on platforms like X — which has a monetisation program that lets users earn money from engagement — cryptocurrencies and fake fundraisers are being used to directly make money from the shootings.
A handful of new cryptocurrencies based on the tragedy have been launched in its aftermath.
These include $BondiBeach, a coin named $HERO after Ahmed al-Ahmed, the heroic man who disarmed one of the alleged gunmen (its developer claims to have donated more than $47,000 in real money to a GoFundMe for al-Ahmed based on transaction fees), and even one named after Matilda, the youngest victim of Sunday’s shooting, called $MATILDA.
$MATILDA’s website, which wrongly claims that the 10-year-old was a French citizen and the daughter of a Holocaust survivor, claims that the coin was “created to honour her memory, so her legacy can live on-chain forever — like Pnut the squirrel”. This is likely a reference to an Instagram-famous squirrel that briefly became an international story last year when it was euthanised over (incorrect) fears that it carried rabies.
An account purporting to be behind $MATILDA did not respond to questions about whether they had received permission to use the child’s likeness.
It’s trivially easy and free to create a new coin that can be widely traded on major cryptocurrency exchanges, paving the way for people to launch new coins immediately in response to real-world events.
With no inherent value, speculating on a coin is a very rough proxy for how much attention something will get. Some users have made thousands of dollars in profits from selling the $MATILDA, hours after it launched.
Elsewhere, there has been an attempt to fundraise for “Edward Crabtree”, the made-up person that an AI-generated website, users online and, later, Elon Musk’s own AI chatbot Grok, all claimed had heroically tackled one of the Bondi shooters.
A GoFundMe page for Crabtree has been set up, claiming to raise funds as a “direct thank you to him”. So far, it has only received one donation of $150.
A spokesperson for GoFundMe told Crikey in an email that people should go to the platform’s Bondi Beach shooting hub for vetted fundraisers. The Crabtree fundraiser remains online.
The Australian government anti-scam body ScamWatch has not put out any alerts regarding Bondi Beach fundraisers, but has previously warned about scams around previous global news events like Australia’s 2019-2020 bushfire season.
- This story first appeared on Crikey. You can read the original here.
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