Sam Bankman-Fried, co-founder and chief executive officer of FTX, in Hong Kong, China, on Tuesday, May 11, 2021.
Lam Yik | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Rampant bots on Twitter helped to pump up the price of cryptocurrency, including coins traded by insiders at FTX hedge fund Alameda Research before its collapse, according to a new study from the Network Contagion Research Institute published Wednesday.
NCRI researchers conducted a scaled analysis on Twitter (now known as X) examining over 3 million tweets from Jan. 1, 2019, to Jan. 27, 2023, pertaining to 18 different cryptocurrencies in partnership with New Jersey GovSTEM Scholars. They also shared their findings with X Corp. days ahead of publication.
Mentions of certain altcoins by Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, who led an acquisition of Twitter that closed last October, appear to have caused prices to spike by as much as 50% within one day, the researchers found.
The NCRI study pointed to Musk’s June 24, 2023, retweet of a post featuring a kitten and the caption, “I wake up there is another PSYOP,” a coin created by a pseudonymous Twitter influencer known as Ben.eth. Trading of this altcoin nearly doubled in volume over the next day, according to CoinMarketCap data.
Separately, a Musk tweet on May 13, 2023, featuring Pepe the Frog memes led to a more than 50% increase in the price of altcoin PEPE within 24 hours. Musk’s tweet fueled both authentic discussion and bot and promotional tweets about the altcoin, which is based on a popular far-right meme.
The NCRI findings raise significant questions about social media driven market manipulation in the broader crypto markets. The study also highlights the considerable challenge Musk faces in reigning in bot activity that was pervasive on the social media platform for years and still persists there.
Musk has claimed, without providing data, that bot activity has fallen since he acquired Twitter.
According to Alex Goldenberg, Lead Intelligence Analyst for NCRI, “Since Musk’s team took over Twitter last year, API changes were made to deter bot creation, possibly reducing crypto promotion and scams. However, these changes come with trade-offs as they also hinder independent audits by third-party researchers.”
Goldenberg recommends that if bot activity remains high, X Corp. could “consider stricter account verification, machine learning for bot detection, and special permissions for certified researchers to ensure transparency while combating malicious bot activity and other forms of online harm.”
X Corp. has been increasing the price to access data for researchers, while also filing lawsuits and threats against researchers looking into hate speech and other online harms on its platform. In recent weeks, X Corp. sued Bright Data and the Center for Countering Digital Hate, for example, raising the ire of House Democrats. NCRI partners with Bright Data for pro-bono access to social media data, Goldenberg noted.
X Corp. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
FTX benefitted greatly from Twitter bot activity
The NCRI study also highlights how inauthentic activity on Twitter helped drive up the price of tokens listed on FTX in the months before the crypto exchange collapsed. “Bot-like accounts were used to manipulate market sentiment and drive up the price of FTX-listed tokens,” Goldenberg told CNBC in an interview.
Six small-cap tokens listed by FTX were significantly influenced by inauthentic social media activity on Twitter, NCRI found. The researchers said that “inauthentic chatter” was “successfully and deliberately deployed to influence changes in FTX coin prices,” for six tokens: BOBA, GALA, IMX, RNDR, and SPELL.
Alameda held at least five of these tokens before they were listed on FTX, and as bot-like activity on Twitter amplified the visibility of the tokens. For one crypto asset, RNDR, inauthentic posts and activity on Twitter concurred with or preceded double-digit percentage jumps in its price.
On four separate dates from 2022 to 2023, spikes in bot activity on Twitter preceded increases in RNDR’s price ranging from 11% to 30% within a single day, the NCRI analysis found.
FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried and his team were well aware of Twitter’s influence on the crypto markets, and how sophisticated investors could extract value from social-media driven price action.
“People on crypto Twitter, or other sort of similar parties, go and put $200 million in the box collectively,” Bankman-Fried said in an 2022 interview on Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast. “In the world we’re in, if you do this, everyone’s gonna be like, ‘Ooh, box token. Maybe it’s cool. If you buy in box token,’ you know, that’s gonna appear on Twitter and it’ll have a $20 million market cap.”
FTX was one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world before it filed for bankruptcy in 2022.
Bankman-Fried, 31, now faces a federal indictment for allegedly committing securities and wire fraud. He’s also the subject of Securities and Exchange Commission charges, which alleges that he built his empire on a “foundation of deception.”
Representatives for Bankman-Fried declined to comment. The SEC and FTX did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
White House trade advisor Peter Navarro chastised Apple CEO Tim Cook on Monday over the company’s response to pressure from the Trump administration to make more of its products outside of China.
“Going back to the first Trump term, Tim Cook has continually asked for more time in order to move his factories out of China,” Navarro said in an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk on the Street.” “I mean it’s the longest-running soap opera in Silicon Valley.”
CNBC has reached out to Apple for comment on Navarro’s criticism.
President Donald Trump has in recent months ramped up demands for Apple to move production of its iconic iPhone to the U.S. from overseas. Apple’s flagship phone is produced primarily in China, but the company has increasingly boosted production in India, partly to avoid the higher cost of Trump’s tariffs.
Trump in May warned Apple would have to pay a tariff of 25% or more for iPhones made outside the U.S. In separate remarks, Trump said he told Cook, “I don’t want you building in India.”
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Analysts and supply chain experts have argued it would be impossible for Apple to completely move iPhone production to the U.S. By some estimates, a U.S.-made iPhone could cost as much as $3,500.
Navarro said Cook isn’t shifting production out of China quickly enough.
“With all these new advanced manufacturing techniques and the way things are moving with AI and things like that, it’s inconceivable to me that Tim Cook could not produce his iPhones elsewhere around the world and in this country,” Navarro said.
Apple currently makes very few products in the U.S. During Trump’s first term, Apple extended its commitment to assemble the $3,000 Mac Pro in Texas.
In February, Apple said it would spend $500 billion within the U.S., including on assembling some AI servers.
CoreWeave founders Brian Venturo, at left in sweatshirt, and Mike Intrator slap five after ringing the opening bell at Nasdaq headquarters in New York on March 28, 2025.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Artificial intelligence hyperscaler CoreWeave said Monday it will acquire Core Scientific, a leading data center infrastructure provider, in an all-stock deal valued at approximately $9 billion.
Coreweave stock fell about 4% on Monday while Core Scientific stock plummeted about 20%. Shares of both companies rallied at the end of June after the Wall Street Journal reported that talks were underway for an acquisition.
The deal strengthens CoreWeave’s position in the AI arms race by bringing critical infrastructure in-house.
CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said the move will eliminate $10 billion in future lease obligations and significantly enhance operating efficiency.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025, pending regulatory and shareholder approval.
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The deal expands CoreWeave’s access to power and real estate, giving it ownership of 1.3 gigawatts of gross capacity across Core Scientific’s U.S. data center footprint, with another gigawatt available for future growth.
Core Scientific has increasingly focused on high-performance compute workloads since emerging from bankruptcy and relisting on the Nasdaq in 2024.
Core Scientific shareholders will receive 0.1235 CoreWeave shares for each share they hold — implying a $20.40 per-share valuation and a 66% premium to Core Scientific’s closing stock price before deal talks were reported.
After closing, Core Scientific shareholders will own less than 10% of the combined company.
Two young men stand inside a shopping mall in front of a large illuminated Apple logo seen through a window in Chongqing, China, on June 4, 2025.
Cheng Xin | Getty Images
Apple on Monday appealed what it called an “unprecedented” 500 million euro ($586 million) fine issued by the European Union for violating the bloc’s Digital Markets Act.
“As our appeal will show, the EC [European Commission] is mandating how we run our store and forcing business terms which are confusing for developers and bad for users,” the company said in a statement. “We implemented this to avoid punitive daily fines and will share the facts with the Court.”
Apple recently made changes to its App Store‘s European policies that the company said would be in compliance with the DMA and would avoid the fines.
The Commission, which is the executive body of the EU, announced its fine in April, saying that Apple “breached its anti-steering obligation” under the DMA with restrictions on the App Store.
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“Due to a number of restrictions imposed by Apple, app developers cannot fully benefit from the advantages of alternative distribution channels outside the App Store,” the commission wrote. “Similarly, consumers cannot fully benefit from alternative and cheaper offers as Apple prevents app developers from directly informing consumers of such offers.”
Under the DMA, tech giants like Apple and Google are required to allow businesses to inform end-users of offers outside their platform — including those at different prices or with different conditions.
Companies like Epic Games and Spotify have complained about restrictions within the App Store that make it harder for them to communicate alternative payment methods to iOS users.
Apple typically takes a 15%-30% cut on in-app purchases.