Last night, the official Twitter account of Pump.fun along with its founder Alon's account were banned. As of now, multiple crypto projects, including Gmgn and Bullx, along with their founders' and prominent KOL accounts, have also been suspended, with no clear reasons for the bans provided so far.

Regarding the ban on the Pump.fun account, some in the community speculated that it might be related to its previous legal cases and the SEC potentially pursuing liabilities against Pumpfun. However, this was later debunked, with others clarifying that the SEC had not issued any such statement.

After Alon's account was banned, renowned meme coin KOL Ansem posted, saying, "If Alon’s account isn’t reinstated, I’ll be moving to Farcaster."

The following is the initial article content:

It’s been years since the crypto space saw mass account suspensions, and this time, it’s not on Weibo but rather on Musk’s so-called free speech platform, X.

Currently suspended accounts include the official gmgn account and its founder, the official eliza account and its founder, as well as a host of well-known crypto KOLs.

Possible Reasons for the Bans

Looking back at history, X has banned individual accounts on numerous occasions, such as Trump and CSW (Craig Wright), who is infamous in the crypto circles. However, mass bans like this are quite rare.

There was one such instance in 2021 during the Capitol Hill incident where tens of thousands of Trump-supporting accounts were banned. At the end of 2022, when Musk took over X, he purged a large number of fake accounts, impersonation accounts, and bot accounts, which were largely aligned with his personal and political agenda.

One perspective suggests that this recent wave of mass bans stemmed from a political meme, as shown in the image below. The meme seemingly played on the potential reconciliation between Trump and Musk, as both have made conciliatory remarks toward each other. Some believe Musk didn’t like the meme and decided to ban the related accounts.

However, this reasoning doesn’t hold water. First, it’s not just a few accounts that posted this meme. Some of the banned accounts didn’t post this meme at all, and many other accounts posting similar images on X haven’t been banned.

Another theory speculates that the bans are mostly tied to GMGN, as GMGN has been using web crawlers to scrape large volumes of tweets from X. Yet, this explanation has flaws too. Many InfoFi projects these days don’t pay X for proper API access and rely heavily on web scraping. Despite this, their accounts remain untouched.

Rhythm BlockBeats also reached out to the suspended Haze, who said he still does not know the exact reason and is waiting for a response from X.

Coincidentally, Musk posted a tweet on June 10, stating that X's algorithm has once again been adjusted to heavily utilize Grok. Based on this suspension incident, we also asked Grok for insights.

Grok listed some possible reasons:

1. User Reports: Some posts claim that certain users are using quant trading bots to mass-report Chinese crypto accounts, accusing them of "buying low and selling high" or engaging in pump-and-dump schemes with small wallets and large wallets. This could lead the algorithm to misjudge such behavior as "platform manipulation" or "spam."

2. Content Patterns: Suspended accounts tend to frequently mention specific crypto projects (such as ai16z, ElizaOS) or interact with GMGN, which might be flagged by the algorithm as "inductive promotion" or "potential scams." X is particularly sensitive to cryptocurrency content, as it often involves high-risk investments or fraud.

3. Algorithmic Misjudgment: Grok's enhanced automation detection might be overly sensitive to high-frequency posting or accounts with similar patterns (e.g., meme coin promotions), leading to false suspensions. Historical cases suggest that crypto accounts have been temporarily suspended after being mistakenly labeled as spam.

Will It Follow Weibo's Footsteps?

This wave of account suspensions targeting crypto users on Twitter (now X) easily brings to mind the massive clampdowns on crypto KOL accounts by Weibo in 2018 and 2021. Certain major accounts, such as Jinse Finance, Huobi News, BiShiJie, and individuals including @SuperBitcoin, @TraderXiaoxia, @BlueCX, @TonyLiFaShi, @BitcoinCaesar, and @BitcoinFatty, were banned. Their related pages cited violations of laws, regulations, or Weibo Community Guidelines, rendering the accounts inaccessible.

After these bans, crypto KOLs on Weibo had no choice but to migrate to Twitter. Under Weibo's highly opaque censorship system, a large number of content creators were "uprooted," which eventually pushed Weibo out of the spotlight in the crypto discourse space.

Against this backdrop, Twitter subsequently became a key platform for the Chinese crypto community. Unlike Weibo's closed censorship system, Twitter provided a haven for many crypto KOLs and project teams due to its brand narrative of openness and freedom of expression. However, this sanctuary seems to be losing its protective qualities. With the deepening deployment of AI-driven content governance systems (like Grok), account suspensions on X are becoming more systematic, more automated, and increasingly difficult to contest.

What’s different is that the X platform is not governed by a government-driven content moderation system but is gradually sliding into a new model of centralized information control under the logic of dehumanization and algorithmic governance. In this mechanism, even if the platform does not directly intervene in content judgment, it may exacerbate misjudgments, amplify public opinion attacks, and abandon manual review through technical means, creating an even less transparent environment for expression.

Related reading: 《The World Hates Social Media as It Is Today》

In light of this increasingly reinforced logic of technological blockade, the value of decentralized social networks is being reevaluated. On-chain social protocols such as Farcaster and Lens Protocol are being mentioned more often. However, these protocols are still in their early stages, with user experience and mainstream influence far from matching that of X, making it challenging to become viable alternatives in the short term.

Nonetheless, in the face of content platforms’ recurring traps and the pressure of strict regulatory environments, it seems predictable that content creators will migrate to decentralized social platforms to gain more freedom and ownership of their accounts.

Finally, to protect the X accounts of cryptocurrency content creators, the following measures can be taken to reduce risks:

1. Avoid high-frequency promotions: Reduce frequent mentions of specific projects or contract addresses (CAs) to prevent being misjudged as posting inducive content.

2. Compliant posting: Ensure content does not exaggerate gains or include misleading statements, while adhering to X's advertising and financial product policies.

3. Security measures: Enable two-factor authentication (2FA), regularly check account permissions, and prevent hacks that could result in account suspension.

4. Appeals and communication: In case of account suspension, promptly submit an appeal through X's appeal channels and publicly seek community support.

BlockBeats will continue to follow this matter and bring reliable updates to readers as soon as possible.

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