X tightens promotion rules, is the era of wild marketing on crypto Twitter coming to an end?

The era of savage marketing on crypto Twitter may be coming to an end, thanks to platform-led measures.

Author: David, Deep Tide TechFlow

On February 21, X product lead Nikita Bier publicly demanded that the poster clarify whether a post was paid promotion, or else the account would be banned.

This post came from the account @infodexx, featuring a ranking of the “Most Valuable Startups of 2025,” predicting that market platform Kalshi, valued at $11 billion, ranks second.

The post received over 420,000 views, but the poster’s bio read “Kalshi partner,” and initially, there was no indication that it was paid promotion.

Subsequently, a user tagged it as commercial content using X’s Community Notes—a collaborative fact-checking feature where approved annotations appear directly below posts—essentially soft advertising.

Bier then announced that X will launch a paid promotion disclosure feature next week, requiring all posts involving paid collaborations to be labeled, with violations resulting in account bans.

The poster later added a background note indicating it was a paid promotion.

But mandatory disclosure is just the latest step in this series of adjustments.

Over the past five months, X has systematically cleaned up 1.7 million spam marketing bots, revoked API access for InfoFi-like apps, introduced anti-automation detection mechanisms, and restricted programmatic reply interfaces…

Though these actions occurred at different times, together they form a clear timeline.

The brutal marketing era on crypto Twitter may be ending at the hands of the platform itself.

Five months of cuts, striking at the core of crypto marketing

In the past five months, X has made six major cuts to marketing rules. Here are the key milestones:

First Cut: Spam Bots

In October 2025, Bier announced that X had removed 1.7 million reply spam bots in a week— the largest cleanup since Musk’s acquisition. The main targets were automated crypto-related accounts, familiar to anyone who has seen:

scam links in popular posts, fake accounts impersonating Elon Musk, and repetitive “gm” bots.

Removing 1.7 million was just the first step; the underlying issues are much bigger.

Second Cut: InfoFi and “Post to Earn Tokens” Model

The proliferation of these bots was largely driven by InfoFi.

Third-party platforms track user posts and interactions on X, rewarding them with tokens or points. Originally intended to incentivize valuable content, the system evolved into a focus on quantity over quality, as posting could generate income. Bot farms and AI-generated replies quickly flooded leaderboards.

The biggest project, Kaito, at its peak Yaps had over 157,000 active users. By January 9, 2026, CryptoQuant detected 7.75 million crypto-related posts in a single day on X—12 times the normal level.

On January 15, 2026, Bier announced a policy change banning all apps that reward users for posting on X, immediately revoking related API access.

Kaito shut down Yaps; its token KAITO dropped about 17% that day. Cookie DAO also shut down similar product Snaps; the entire InfoFi sector lost roughly $40 million in market cap in one day.

(See: X pulls the plug, ending the era of paid promotion)

Third Cut: Accounts Simulating Human Operation

On February 13, Bier announced a new round of automated detection.

Without real humans clicking, accounts and all linked accounts could be banned. This cut targets not just traditional bots but all accounts operated via scripts, automation tools, or AI proxies.

Bier said X will support compliant proxy use cases in the future, but until rules are clear, developers are advised to pause integrations and use official APIs when necessary.

Fourth Cut: Soft Advertising

The first three cuts targeted automation and spam; the fourth targets a broader gray area: undisclosed paid promotion.

Crypto Twitter regulars know that such practices are almost industry standard.

In September 2025, on-chain investigator ZachXBT published a spreadsheet listing over 200 crypto KOLs’ promotion quotes and wallet addresses. About 160 accepted promotions, but fewer than 5 disclosed “ads” in their posts.

On January 22, researcher Nima Owji discovered a “Paid Promotion” label feature in X’s backend code. Creators will need to check whether a post is paid, and the label will appear directly on the post.

By February 21, when Bier personally intervened in the Kalshi post, this feature was ready to launch. He also announced a “Made with AI” label, requiring AI-generated content to be marked as well.

Fifth Cut: Prediction Market Promotions

Alongside the disclosure feature, X updated its partner policy, explicitly classifying prediction markets (like Kalshi and Polymarket) as gambling products, banning undisclosed related ads.

Kalshi removed its partnership badge on X on February 23, citing enforcement difficulties and the risk of users mistaking badge-bearing accounts for official endorsements.

Sixth Cut: Programmatic Replies

The final cut was announced on February 24. X’s developer platform restricted automated replies via API.

Replies are only allowed if the original poster @mentions or quotes the account. Bier said this is the first step to eliminate bots, closing the biggest loophole.

With these six cuts—covering bots, incentive mechanisms, automation tools, covert ads, category-specific promotions, and API reply restrictions—X has progressively tightened control over crypto content.

Together, they systematically dismantle the marketing infrastructure that has sustained crypto Twitter for years.

X refuses free rides, welcomes paid promotions

These rule changes are reshaping the cost structure of crypto marketing. In recent years, three main free channels for user acquisition on X were:

1. InfoFi platforms incentivizing posting for visibility,
2. KOLs doing covert promotions without disclosure,
3. Automation tools flooding popular posts with traffic.

Now, all three are restricted or shut down. Meanwhile, X’s algorithm is widening the visibility gap between paid and unpaid accounts.

Premium users get 2 to 4 times more weight in the For You feed and reply rankings. Creators testing after March 2025 found that non-premium accounts posting external links see median engagement nearly drop to zero.

Organic reach for crypto content has already shrunk earlier. In December 2025, trader Lisa Edwards analyzed that after an algorithm update, posts with BTC, ETH, or other token symbols saw about an 80% drop in reach.

At the same time, free channels are blocked, and paid channels are expanding.

X has been gradually relaxing its crypto ad policies. According to the official ad policy update log, since 2024, DeFi product ads have been permitted; blockchain game ads are open in the US and Brazil; crypto exchange and wallet ads now target markets like Denmark, Israel, the Netherlands, Portugal, Ghana, and Kenya.

According to AWISEE, X’s approval rate for crypto ads is about 60%, the highest among major platforms—Meta around 50%, Google even lower and explicitly banning DeFi ads.

While free distribution is being systematically squeezed, paid categories and markets are growing—a common monetization path for all content platforms:

Initially cultivating a free content ecosystem to attract users and creators, then tightening organic distribution as network effects build, and finally shifting traffic toward paid channels.

Facebook did the same in 2014 with brand pages, causing organic reach to plummet from double digits to single digits, forcing brands to shift from content to advertising.

What X is doing now with crypto content is essentially the same playbook.

Who pays, who drops out?

As free channels are cut, the costs will ultimately be borne by every player in the industry. This impacts crypto marketing in at least three ways:

First, rising customer acquisition costs.

Previously, a crypto project could incentivize thousands via InfoFi points to boost its presence on X— that route is now closed.

Official KOL promotions will become more transparent with the disclosure feature, but posts labeled “ad” will see reduced trust and engagement. Projects will need to increase budgets or accept lower effectiveness.

Second, re-pricing of the KOL economy.

Last year, ZachXBT revealed that over 160 KOLs accepted promotions with little disclosure, with rates from a few hundred to $60,000 per post. After mandatory disclosure, the “seemingly organic but actually ad” space shrinks, and KOLs will shift from “disguise as organic” to “how much conversion can my labeled ad generate.”

The former relies on information asymmetry pricing; the latter on effect-based pricing.

This isn’t necessarily bad for the industry, but in the short term, some KOLs and agencies operating in gray areas will be forced out.

Third, re-evaluating platform dependency risks.

When Bier banned InfoFi, he advised developers to “pivot to Threads and Bluesky.”

A platform executive openly telling developers to switch to competitors indicates X is comfortable with crypto projects diverting elsewhere, even actively promoting it. After these changes, relying solely on X for social assets becomes risky rather than conservative.

For ordinary users, this isn’t entirely bad.

Previously, about 60% of crypto tweets might have been paid promotions, but no one told you. With the disclosure feature, you can now distinguish between genuine opinions and paid ads. The environment becomes cleaner, and judgment costs decrease.

Of course, the timing of tighter rules coincides with a bear market.

Bear markets naturally reduce marketing budgets; fewer projects spend on promotion, and the feed becomes quieter. Whether this cleaner environment is due to rules or market conditions will only be clear when the bull returns.

In any case, whether project teams, KOLs, or ordinary creators, the ticket to being seen on crypto Twitter is increasing.

The old logic was “the louder you shout, the more you win”; the new one is “pay to play.”