Brian Chesky, the cofounder and CEO of Airbnb, had his X account compromised on Monday in what appears to be the latest high-profile social media hack weaponized to push crypto-adjacent narratives. The hijacked account posted a multi-tweet thread expressing bullish sentiment on real-world asset tokenization, the crypto sector’s term for converting traditional assets like stocks and real estate into digital tokens on a blockchain.
The thread, which Fortune confirmed was unauthorized through a source with knowledge of the situation, accumulated over 700,000 views before being scrubbed from the platform.
What the fake thread actually said
The now-deleted posts read like a carefully constructed thought-leader monologue. “I’ve been quietly keeping an eye on real-world asset tokenization for a while now,” the account wrote. “Most of it is noise. But underneath the noise, something real is happening.”
The thread went on to describe RWA tokenization as enabling “global, fractional, and instant” ownership of traditional assets. It drew parallels to Airbnb’s own business model, suggesting that reducing friction in ownership was a theme Chesky understood deeply. The language emphasized trust and governance as the real bottlenecks for tokenization’s success, not the underlying technology.
