The Twitter accounts of some major companies and individuals have been compromised in one of the most widespread and confounding hacks the social networking platform has ever seen, all in service of promoting a bitcoin scam that appears to have earned the hackers a large amount of money.

Billionaires Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates are among many prominent US figures targeted by hackers on Twitter in an apparent Bitcoin scam.

a tweet from Jeff Bezos’ account said.

Twitter said it was a “co-ordinated” attack targeting its employees

The official accounts of Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Kanye West also requested donations in the cryptocurrency.

Reacting to the hack, Twitter wrote;

According to BNO news, more than $53,000 has been paid so far.