X Suspends Major Crypto Accounts Over Alleged $250K Content Farm Scheme

A $250,000 Content Farm Draws X's Attention

X moved against a cluster of prominent crypto accounts on or around Aug. 18, after reports concerning @Vivek4real_ — an account run under the name Vivek Sen — reached Nikita Bier, a figure central to the platform's campaign against spam and low-quality content. Bier joined X's product team in 2025, years after selling his teen-polling app tbh to Facebook in 2017. At the time of the reports, @Vivek4real_ counted roughly 270,000 followers.

According to Bier, a single individual appeared to be operating more than 10 accounts and had extracted over $250,000 from X's revenue-sharing program across the previous two years. He added that the case was being referred to law enforcement.

The suspensions followed swiftly. Accounts identified within the cluster included @Bitcoin_Teddy, @BitcoinSapiens, @Kalshibacktest, @polybacktest and @saylordocs, all tied to Documenting Saylor, a brand themed around Michael Saylor, the MicroStrategy co-founder and one of Bitcoin's most prominent corporate advocates. X has not publicly disclosed every account allegedly controlled by the operator.

Accusations of Stolen Posts

The alleged operation was straightforward. Videos and posts created by journalists, YouTube creators and other X users were reportedly downloaded and re-uploaded through larger accounts — in some cases after watermarks or other identifying material had been deliberately cropped away.

That detail matters because X pays eligible creators in part based on the engagement their posts generate. The payouts — open only to paid Premium subscribers — date to 2023, when the platform, since renamed following Elon Musk's 2022 acquisition, made sharing ad revenue with creators a signature feature. In 2026, the company reworked its system to direct more revenue toward original authors, creating an obvious financial incentive for accounts to present recycled material as their own.

By distributing repurposed content across multiple accounts, an operator could potentially harvest millions of impressions while avoiding the cost of original reporting, interviews or video production. The tactic also allows large accounts to compete directly with the people who actually created the material.

Journalists Reject the 'Net Positive' Defense

Gareth Jenkinson, head of multimedia at The Block, said he had previously confronted Vivek over reposting clips from his show without proper credit. According to Jenkinson, Vivek maintained that the practice was a "net positive" because the extra exposure generated impressions for media personalities and companies.

For creators, however, exposure does not automatically replace attribution or revenue. When a large account republishes material and captures the engagement, the original producer can lose both visibility and money — even though that producer paid for the reporting, filming or editing. The tools for recourse are limited: copyright enforcement on X runs largely through takedown notices filed under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a per-post process that leaves rights holders to track down and report each infringement themselves. YouTube, which has contended with re-uploads since its earliest days, built its answer back in 2007 with Content ID, an automated system that fingerprints uploads and lets rights holders block or monetize matches at scale. X has rolled out no comparable automated tooling.

The dispute has become especially charged across crypto-focused X, widely known as Crypto Twitter or CT, where accounts race aggressively to publish breaking news, videos and market commentary as quickly as possible.

X Escalates Beyond a Simple Suspension

The platform's response signals that industrial-scale content recycling can carry consequences beyond the loss of an account. Bier's decision to forward the matter to law enforcement potentially shifts the case from an internal platform dispute into questions involving fraud or copyright infringement. Under U.S. copyright law, willful infringement can carry statutory damages of up to $150,000 per work — a heavier potential consequence than any account ban.

The suspensions also fit within X's broader 2025–26 campaign against spam, AI-generated reply bots, engagement farms and reward systems that push users to publish enormous volumes of low-quality material. Crypto accounts have repeatedly landed in those enforcement sweeps because engagement-driven posting has become deeply embedded across the sector.

The Purge Is Not Finished

For smaller creators, fewer content farms could mean less competition from recycled posts and a better shot at capturing the impressions, attribution and revenue generated by their own work.

The problem is far from resolved. Jenkinson and other users have said similar accounts remain active, leaving X with the difficult task of separating coordinated content farms from legitimate aggregation, commentary and fair-use publishing.

What comes next depends on whether law enforcement acts on Bier's referral and whether X continues hunting comparable networks. Not everyone endorsed the escalation. "Honestly, a bit surprised to see words like 'defrauded' and 'forwarded to law enforcement' over tweet stealing/engagement slop. Not sure if that type of escalation is necessary. A simple suspension should've sufficed," the X account Pledditor wrote.

The real test will be measurable: whether original creators ultimately capture more reach and revenue as the platform eliminates accounts built around recycled material.