The best 'Crypto Twitter' account to follow

This week, I'm at the Crypto Bahamas conference put on by crypto trading giant FTX and it's chock full of billionaires and crypto venture capitalists.

It's an incredible backdrop for what is an incredible gathering of some of the smartest people in crypto -- and yet, it would seem even some of them haven't heard of the best "crypto Twitter" account to follow.

It's anonymous. It's investigative. And its incredible analysis of on-chain transaction data provides some ruthless takedowns of the worst crypto scammers. If crypto had its own "Cops" television show, this would be it.

I was surprised to learn other people in crypto didn't already follow him, so I figure it's definitely worth flagging here.

The account is "zachXBT" and he's quickly adding to his more than 200,000 followers with each thread he posts chronicling exactly how scammers are going about ripping people off. Sometimes, he'll tweet at the authorities in the jurisdictions of where these supposed scammers live. It's glorious.

Pinned to the top of his account is a running list of "shady actors," which highlights all his various threads documenting some of the most egregious offenders (including some high profile celebrities.)

What's great about it is that in a world where the actual regulators are often too busy to police every scam, it's nice to know there is at least a watch dog with a huge following to keep people honest in the court of public opinion. Of course, it still hasn't stopped many scammers from trying to get away with things.

I wrote about these scams being an issue even before NFTs came around to make it infinitely easier. In 2018, the SEC went after Floyd Mayweather Jr. and DJ Kahled for promoting a crypto without disclosing they were paid to do so. Mayweather got hit with more than $600,000 in penalties and was barred from promoting assets, digital or otherwise, for three years.

With that moratorium now up, Mayweather has been quite active in promoting NFT projects that have raised millions, only to eventually "rug" owners. Sometimes he still promotes specific crypto projects that also plummet after his endorsements send prices surging.

For example, Mayweather promoted the Bored Bunny NFT project that raised millions of dollars before the team basically vanished with the project's funds. As ZachXBT chronicles, the money moves through various wallets and then is as good as gone. That specifically doesn't link Mayweather to the end recipient of funds, but he certainly was on his own NFT drops that never quite panned out.

For all the attention ZachXBT has been paying to covering Mayweather's crypto moves, it appears that Mayweather has noticed. ZachXBT recently shared a screenshot of a purported message from Mayweather's Twitter account asking him to let up on covering the projects he's been pumping, noting, "We finally have a good system in place."

Now, to be fair, I claimed regulators often aren't policing this space. So, using Mayweather as an example here might not be correct seeing as the SEC had already brought charges against him before. But that's not to say it can't happen again, likely with the help of some of the attention brought forward from ZachXBT now. And, it likely also pressures regulators into doing something.

Indeed, they have. A duo of 20-year-old NFT creators were charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud a couple months ago and it served as a pretty solid warning to everyone in the NFT space.

Then again, there are still influencers with millions of followers who are still bold enough to follow the same path of launching an NFT project only to turn around and siphon funds away. Just weeks ago, he put out another thread about a French influencer who spearheaded one NFT project that ran away with nearly $1 million in funds raised.

It's likely convenient for a lot of people in the crypto or NFT space to turn a blind eye to the scammy side of NFTs. It makes it all look bad and scammy to newcomers, so it makes sense people might overlook an account focusing on it. But in the longer term, only by spotlighting the space's worst actors is anything likely to improve. And for that, we have an anonymous Twitter account to thank.