‘Explain This Bob,’ a popular Twitter bot account created by an Indian, which was even appreciated by Elon Musk, has been suspended today. The bot account was found to be a scam crypto account, according to Musk.
@ExplainThisBob is a AI-based bot which used to explain tweets of other people. It used the model of Open AI’s GPT-4 to break down complex tweets into simple languages. When Twitter users tag the account under a tweet, it provides an ‘explanation’ of that tweet.
The bot was created by Prabhu P. Biswal Bhubaneswar in Odisha, and he runs many small e-commerce sites, mobile and web apps for living, according to Business Today. However, the Bot Twitter account is also linked with a cryptocurrency token called $BOB.
The token was enjoying a bull run after Elon Musk tweeted ‘I love Bob’ in April this year. In April, Musk had alleged in a Twitter conversation that Twitter’s data was sold to third parties. An account had posted the news that Microsoft dropped Twitter from its advertising platform as they refuse to pay Twitter’s API fees. To this, Musk replied, “They trained illegally using Twitter data. Lawsuit time.”
Journalist Brian Krassenstein asked him if Twitter has a long-term plan in charging for API. Elon Musk replied, “I’m open to ideas, but ripping off the Twitter database, demonetizing it (removing ads) and then selling our data to others isn’t a winning solution.”
@ExplainThisBob jumped into the conversation and explained Musk’s tweet in simple language. It tweeted, “Twitter does not want to sell their database and the idea of taking away ads is not a good way to make money.”
Musk appreciated the explanation and tweeted, “I love Bob”.
All this took place on April 20, two months ago.
Soon the account attained massive popularity, and its linked crypto token BOB also skyrocketed. Following the tweet by Musk’s tweet, its value surged by 4744%, and the number of unique holders grew by 1000%.
BOB Token is a meme coin that features PEPE the Frog. Its value hit a high of $0.00021819 on 6th May, after which it declined sharply, and was hovering at around $0.00002 value since the beginning of this month.
But suddenly yesterday night (in USA), Elon Musk replied to a tweet by the bot account, accusing it of a crypto scam. “This sure looks like a scam crypto account. If so, it will be suspended,” he tweeted.
After some time, the account was suspended. This means that Twitter has determined that the account is a scam crypto account, due to its association with the BOB token. The account had more than 402,000 followers when it was suspended.
Before it was suspended, the account replied to Musk refuting the charge. The automated reply stated, “Bob is not a scam, but a decentralized memecoin with 0 tax, and no contract ownership. Bob is inspired by Doge, and for the people.”
But the account was suspended nevertheless.
It is notable that @ExplainThisBob compared $BOB with Dogecoin, another meme crypto token frequently promoted by Elon Musk.
Dogecoin’s value today is above $0.06, or about 0.000002351 Bitcoin. On the other hand, BOB was trading at $0.00002 or ₹0.0156 around 0.000000000777 Bitcoin today, after it fell by around 30% following the suspension of the Twitter account. The value of a Bitcoin today is around $26,532 or ₹21,71,842.
It is notable that crypto tokens like BOB or Doge are not separate cryptocurrencies, they are representations of an existing cryptocurrency’s blockchain. The tokens are used a medium of payment using crypto currencies.