Elon Musk's Exposé That US Government Can Access Twitter DMs Spooks Crypto Market

Tech billionaire and "Chief Twit" Elon Musk made a shocking revelation recently when he disclosed that several U.S. government agencies have the ability to gain full access to Twitter user activities, including direct messaging (DM) - an exposé that seemingly spooked the market and caused the prices of multiple crypto assets to plummet.

During his Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson, Musk claimed that he was shocked to uncover the government's ability to read users' DMs on Twitter. "The degree to which government agencies effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter blew my mind," the tech billionaire who purchased the micro-blogging site last year told the host.

When asked if the said access includes people's DMs, Musk said, "Yes."

Unfortunately, while Musk's accusations greatly impact the privacy of Twitter users, he did not elaborate or delve deep into the subject. Based on the interview, it is not clear if the "full access" he was talking about affects all Twitter users.

Musk also failed to disclose how the U.S. government gained full access to the social media platform and what authorized this access. And, the most important question is, what has he, as the CEO of the micro-blogging site, done since learning about this?

Now, users are asking if Twitter is able to prevent this intrusion from the government or its agencies. The crypto community was shocked by the CEO's revelations, and a Twitter user who goes by the handle @WSBChairman compared the tech billionaire's revelations to that of Edward Snowdn's illegal government surveillance exposé in 2013.

"It would be safe to assume that the US Gov still has complete access to our DMs and activity on other social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Telegram, and Google," the Twitter user added.

The interview, which is set to air Tuesday night, also shows the tech billionaire expressing his concern about the latest wave of artificial intelligence (AI), which he said could potentially destroy civilization.

Musk's interview seemingly spooked the crypto market, which saw Bitcoin (BTC), the world's largest crypto asset by market capitalization, fall below its $30,000 key psychological level and incur a 1.39% loss over the past 24 hours. It was trading down at $29,898.55 with a 24-hour volume of $15,244,135,218 as of 5:57 a.m. ET on Monday.

Meanwhile, Musk's favorite crypto asset Dogecoin (DOGE) was seemingly unaffected by the news and saw a 4.72% gain over the past 24 hours. It was trading in the green zone at $0.09388, with a 24-hour volume of $923,134,641 at around the same time, according to the latest data from CoinMarketCap.