No, Tesla hasn't launched new crypto trading platform for EU to 'make families richer'

By: Praveen Kumar
July 5 2023

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Context

A viral Facebook post from June 26, 2023, reads, "Brace yourselves for the big reveal: Tesla has announced a new secret project that could be a game-changer for the economy." The post has garnered over 35,000 views and includes a video that appears to be from BBC News. It shows a TV anchor discussing CEO Elon Musk's announcement about an investment opportunity for people in the European Union - a new multiplatform trading software that can get them returns of €5,700 every month. The same video is also being shared with other captions like "Shock! The last thing anyone wanted to see about Elon Musk happened! just this morning" in other Facebook posts.

The posts link to an article which also appears to be published by BBC News, headlined "SPECIAL REPORT: Tesla launches its newest platform Bit Lidex 360 - aims to help families become wealthier." The article claims that Tesla has launched a cryptocurrency trading platform to help families become wealthier amid the financial crisis following the pandemic. It contains a guide to the platform and describes it as, "Bit Lidex 360 is a new cryptocurrency trading platform that, according to Tesla, can transform anyone into a millionaire within 3-4 months!." The Facebook post is archived here. However, this claim is baseless.

In Fact

Tesla and Musk have neither introduced a cryptocurrency trading platform called Bit Lidex 360 nor made any such announcement.

The anchor in the video is Matthew Amroliwala, a presenter for the BBC World News program Global. Amroliwala's mouth movement does not match the voiceover in the clip, a telltale sign of AI editing. Further, we traced this video clip to one of BBC's news segments uploaded to YouTube on May 16, 2023. The original video is titled "ChatGPT boss Sam Altman questioned on AI safety in US Congress - BBC News." In this segment, Amroliwala reports on Altman and AI. Elon Musk is mentioned concerning the development of AI systems and an open letter he co-wrote to U.S. Senate members in March 2023. Amroliwala wears the same attire as in the viral video, and his background is the same. He does not mention Musk in any other capacity in the May 16 news segment. 

The standard BBC news ticker has red and white panels. Usually, the red panel shows the main headline of the current story, and the smaller white panel shows other news headlines that change every few seconds. In the viral video, the red panel acts as a subtitle bar, which matches the Tesla trading platform announcement, and the white panel shows the phrases "A NEW INVESTMENT PROJECT FROM ELON MASK" and later, "FOLLOW THE LINK IN DESCRIPTION." The misspelling of Musk as "Mask" is an error highly unlikely to show on the BBC ticker and one that would be corrected instantly if it did. 

The external link in the Facebook posts appears to direct to a BBC article. The BBC News logo can be seen at the top left corner of the article, but the web addresses shared in the Facebook posts lead to different sites which cannot be accessed directly. A genuine article from the BBC would have been published under the web address. 

The top band on the BBC site stretches to fill the screen, while the one linked in the post ends before. The top band also allows users to click through the sections mentioned and features a search bar. However, the band on these fake websites does not allow any activity.

Authentic BBC articles always display the published date under the headline; the article in the post does not. The article mentions the purported new cryptocurrency trading platform "Bit Lidex 360" and asks the reader to complete a form to access it. However, when we searched with relevant keywords, we could not find any such report or video news report published by BBC News. 

Web searches for Bit Lidex 360 led us to a site named Bit Soft 360, which is similar to platforms such as BTC Ai 360 and Ai Biti Codes. These are cryptocurrency trading platforms, none of which promise to make users millionaires. These sites are automated software powered by AI that helps to trade cryptocurrencies. Logically Facts has debunked a similar false claim about Amazon introducing a cryptocurrency trading platform. 

The Verdict

Neither Elon Musk nor Tesla has launched a cryptocurrency trading platform called Bit Lidex 360. An edited video made to look like a BBC News video and a manipulated article appearing to be a BBC News report has been compiled to claim as such. Therefore, we have marked this claim false.