Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky has quipped that a recent hack of his X account left more cryptocurrency followers.
"To the person who hacked my account earlier this week: thanks for all the new crypto followers," Chesky wrote on X. "To my new crypto followers: I'm going to be a very disappointing follow."
The lighthearted remark came after Chesky's account was used to publish a lengthy eyebrow-raising thread praising real-world asset (RWA) tokenization.
AI-generated tokenization thread
As reported by U.Today, the now-deleted posts claimed that Chesky had been quietly following the tokenization sector. He argued that blockchain-based representations of traditional assets could become a major financial innovation.
The thread was highly unusual because Chesky rarely comments on crypto. In May 2022, as reported by U.Today, he floated the idea of Airbnb accepting cryptocurrencies, but that was about it.
On Thursday, Fortune reported that Airbnb treated the incident as a "high-profile compromise." The hospitality giant then asked X's security team to secure the account.
Some users remain unconvinced
Despite Airbnb's handling of the incident, some social media users questioned whether the account had actually been hacked.
Developer Jarrod Watts summed up the skepticism by asking: "Why would a hacker post a thread about RWAs LMAO."
Investor Graeme Moore similarly mocked the alleged attack, writing: "The plan? Hack the Airbnb CEO's account and tweet broadly about tokenized assets."
Others have argued that the AI-written thread may have been an internal mistake. One user joked that the company had launched a public relations campaign to recover from an embarrassing AI-generated post.
Over the past several years, hackers have routinely used high-profile X accounts to promote fraudulent meme coins, fake token launches and cryptocurrency giveaways. The 2020 compromise of dozens of prominent accounts was used to advertise a BTC giveaway scam that collected more than $100,000 before being shut down.
More recently, numerous celebrity accounts have been hijacked to promote fake Solana-based meme coins or bogus token presales.
Dan Burgin
U.Today Editorial Team
