Twitter Hacking of Musk, Kanye, Bezos, Obama and More Features Bitcoin Scam

The Twitter accounts of some of the most high-profile celebs, politicians and business leaders around have been hacked ... and it appears it's all part of a massive Bitcoin scam.

The hack began Wednesday afternoon and is ongoing, but it seems to have started with Elon Musk. Around 4 PM ET, the Tesla founder's Twitter account was seemingly compromised by a hacker ... and it tweeted out a message asking users to send $1,000 to his Bitcoin address and they'd get $2k in return.

Shortly afterward, Bill Gates' account tweeted out a similar message with the identical BTC address. The hacker or hackers are continuing to rack up victims by posting the scam on other accounts ... including those of Kanye West, Jeff Bezos, Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, Barack Obama and most recently, Kim Kardashian West.

Gates' people were quick to respond to the hack, saying ... "We can confirm that this tweet was not sent by Bill Gates. This appears to be part of a larger issue that Twitter is facing. Twitter is aware and working to restore the account."

Some of the scam tweets are being deleted, but then follow-up tweets are going up just as quickly ... or popping up elsewhere.