Why are you following a crypto account on Twitter? It used to be Ryan Lochte
A few of our eagle-eyed readers noticed something unusual on their Twitter timelines lately: a flood of Tweets from a cryptocurrency hype machine.
If you’ve seen the tweets, you know what I mean.
This account is followed by *many* of your favorite swimming accounts, including @swimswamnews, the International Swimming League, Reece Whitley, Olympians from around the world, and even official USA Swimming accounts.
So has swimming gone crypto-crazy? Or is there something else at play?
It turns out that the account, now running under the handle @cryptokingsfirst, used to be the account of one of the most decorated swimmers in history: Ryan Lochte.
The account has 926,000 followers at the time of publication.
Most (but not all) of the account’s old Twitter interactions have been deleted, and around May 30, the account began tweeting and re-tweeting about cryptocurrency and NFTs.
Among the surviving interactions is a RT from fellow Florida Gator Matt Elliott from 2015 celebrating Dan Wallace’s world championship, and “likes” of some old tweets about Lochte’s time on Dancing With the Stars.
It’s unclear who took over the account, but the person identifies himself as “Crypto King” and the account bio says “Crypto Projects & #NFT Promoter #KingFamily.”
The account recently came back to life after a few months of dormancy, offering giveaways and hyping up the cryptocurrency markets.
Meanwhile, a new account with the old @ryanlochte handle has been started and tweeted a few times. So far it has only 14 followers and no profile picture. The tweets indicate they were sent by Lochte, including an advertisement for his sponsor, but SwimSwam could not confirm whether that account, created in December 2021, was authentic Lochte.
We also couldn’t find out if the account was sold or hacked, although we’ve reached out to Lochte’s rep to ask.
Lochte recently auctioned off 6 of his 12 Olympic medals and donated an undisclosed portion of the proceeds to the Jorge Nation Foundation, which plans vacations for seriously ill children. The medals, along with other Lochte memorabilia, sold for over $195,000.
One of the most decorated swimmers in history, the 38-year-old Lochte has 6 Olympic gold medals and 39 World Championship gold medals.
Lochte isn’t the first US national team swimmer to transfer his account to the world of stank and crypto: former US national team player Kendyl StewartIts account grew to over 70,000 followers after it switched to crypto hype and giveaways, but appears to have been suspended by Twitter sometime around May.
Stewart won three short-course World Championships relay golds in 2018, a long-course World Championships silver medal in the 400 medley medley in 2015, and three Pan American Games gold medals in 2019. That included an individual victory in the 100 fly at the 2019 Pan American Games.
