Eli Lilly stock price succumbs to fake tweet, Twitter removes checkmarks from Twitter Blue, and FTX gets hacked.
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That’s all the tech news that’s trending right now, welcome to Hashtag Trending. It’s Monday, November 14, and I’m your host, Tom Li.
Eli Lilly, the pharmaceutical company that commercialized insulin almost 100 years ago, saw its stock price tank by 4.5 per cent when a Twitter user, posing as the company’s official account, falsely tweeted that insulin would be offered for free. The confusion came from, you guessed it, the checkmark next to the account’s name, which was obtained by paying $8 a month. The account did not mark itself as a parody account, a new requirement introduced after Elon Musk took over the platform. In addition to Eli Lilly, Novo Nordisk and Sanofi, two other major suppliers of insulin, also saw their stock prices drop.
Source: Investors
The previous story was just one example of how imposter accounts are taking advantage of the confusion to post bogus tweets, often posing as a brand or public figure, including Elon Musk himself. This was clearly a problem for Twitter, which is probably why it removed the system. In a tweet, Musk condemned the imposters, saying that tricking people is not OK. His backpedaling is in stark contrast to his previous stance, in which he vehemently defended the system when faced with criticism.
Source: Ars Technica
Just when you thought things couldn’t get worse for the doomed crypto exchange FTX, the company is now sandwiched between a bankruptcy filing and a hack involving around $500 million. FTX filed for bankruptcy after it couldn’t raise a $9 billion rescue package. And since all customers are considered creditors, it will take a long time, possibly months, to sort out who’s owed what, which doesn’t even include the recovery process. The hack is just salt in the wound and no one seems to know how it happened. To many, FTX’s fall from grace is still unreal. At its peak, it was the world’s third-largest crypto exchange.
Source: CNET
To drive home how damaging the FTX fiasco has been, one hedge fund admitted that half its capital is now stuck in the platform. Galois Capital co-founder Kevin Zhou apologized for the situation, warning that it may take a few years to recover some percentage of its assets. That’s not very reassuring, but the situation is almost entirely out of their control.
Source: Financial Times
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