The Twitter account of the Italian Ministry of Ecological Transition was hacked on Thursday and the badge was replaced with a photo of Russian Vitalik Buterin, the co-creator and inventor of Ethereum, a digital platform that applies blockchain technology.
The profile photo of the young Russian-Canadian businessman was quickly removed, but many netizens managed to take screenshots, which prompted all kinds of reactions.
According to several analysts interviewed by the Italian press, it was an attempted scam as one of the fake tweets published during the operation indicated that Buterin was offering his cryptocurrency for free.
“A typical modus operandi of scammers who take advantage of the popularity of cryptocurrencies,” explains Gianluca Grossi, editor-in-chief of the site Criptovaluta.it, quoted by the Ansa agency.
The ministry’s account was unreachable for several hours, as was the website.
The authorities are investigating the case, which takes place in Italy ten days before the parliamentary elections on September 25 and at the same time that Butarin announced on his own Twitter account that he had achieved the technological transformation of his “blockchain”. “(blockchain) to use less energy through rapid growth.
“And we’re done! (…). Everyone who has contributed to the success of Merge (“fusion”, the technical name of the mutation, ndr) can be very proud today,” he wrote.
To spend Ether, the digital currency that can be used on the Internet, Ethereum, the contract platform, consumes about 45 TWh of electricity per year, about 10% of the annual electricity consumption in France.
Some industrialists have therefore decided to boycott it, so Ethereum is trying to lower its consumption.
Ether represents about 20% of the total value of existing virtual currencies, surpassed by bitcoin (40%).
For its part, Ethereum has a much wider scope than its competitor as it serves as a multi-use support.
Thousands of developers from around the world are creating applications on Ethereum and inventing new types of applications, many of which are already in use.
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