Hackers tweet that India has accepted Bitcoin as official currency from PM Modi's account

Peeved by the Indian government's idea for a regulation crackdown or outright ban on crypto, Bitcoin aficionados with Twitter hacking skills took over Prime Minister Narendra Modi's official account to claim the opposite. "India has officially adopted bitcoin as legal tender. The government has officially bought 500 BTC and is distributing them to all residents of the country," read the message to PM Modi's 73 million Twitter followers. The hackers could have gone higher with the offer, of course, as at current prices 500 Bitcoins amount to US$24,574,466, or chump change for the country's population of 1.38 billion people.

In any case, the Indian government subsequently tweeted that the "Twitter handle of PM @narendramodi was very briefly compromised. The matter was escalated to Twitter and the account has been immediately secured. In the brief period that the account was compromised, any tweet shared must be ignored." Needless to say, a country like India accepting Bitcoin as legal tender would have been huge crypto news for the community and would have sent the Bitcoin price to stratospheric heights, but that's not the only reason for the hacked tweet.

India is currently mulling a comprehensive cryptocurrency regulation bill that includes provisions for an outright ban on crypto, so the hacking of the Prime Minister's Twitter account was likely intended to serve as a warning. On Friday, PM Modi issued the following comments on the crypto regulation bill that may have prompted the attack:

We must … jointly shape global norms for emerging technologies like social media and cryptocurrencies so that they are used to empower democracy, not to undermine it.

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