X Tightens Promotion Rules: Is the Wild West Era of Crypto Twitter Marketing Over?

Author: David, Deep Tide TechFlow

On February 21, X product leader Nikita Bier publicly demanded that the poster clarify that this is paid promotion; otherwise, 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 profile states “Kalshi partner,” and initially, there was no indication that it was paid promotion.

Subsequently, a user used X’s Community Notes feature—a user-collaborative fact-checking mechanism where approved annotations appear directly below the post—to mark it as commercial promotion, essentially soft advertising.

Bier then announced that X would launch a paid promotion disclosure feature next week, requiring all posts involving paid collaborations to be labeled, with violators facing account bans.

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

Mandatory disclosure is just the latest step in this round of adjustments.

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

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

The era of savage marketing on crypto Twitter may be coming to an end, perhaps by the platform’s own hand.

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

Regarding changes to marketing rules, X has decisively cut six times over the past five months. Here is a timeline of key milestones:

First Cut: Spam Bots

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

Fraud links replying instantly under popular posts, fake accounts impersonating Elon Musk, and uniform “gm” bots.

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

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 and reward them with tokens or points. Originally intended to incentivize valuable information creation, 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 largest project, Kaito, with its Yaps product, peaked at over 157,000 active users. By January 9, 2026, CryptoQuant detected that X had over 7.75 million crypto-related posts in a single day—12 times the normal level.

On January 15, 2026, Bier announced a change to developer API policies, banning all apps that reward users for posting on X, and immediately revoked related API access.

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

(Reference: X’s Deep Purge Ends the Era of Free Riding)

Third Cut: Accounts Simulating Human Operation

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

Without real humans clicking on the screen, the account and all associated accounts could be banned. This cut targeted not just traditional bots but all accounts operated via scripts, automation tools, or AI proxies.

Bier stated that X would support compliant proxy use cases in the future but recommended developers pause integrations until rules are clarified, and to use official APIs if necessary.

Fourth Cut: Soft Promotion

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

Crypto Twitter regulars know that this is almost an industry norm.

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 five disclosed “ad” in their posts.

On January 22, researcher Nima Owji discovered a “Paid Promotion” label feature in X’s backend code. Creators would need to check whether a post was paid promotion, and the label would 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 labeled as well.

Fifth Cut: Prediction Market Promotions

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

Kalshi removed its promotional partner badge on February 23, citing difficulty in enforcement and that users might mistake badge-bearing accounts as Kalshi 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 was the first step to eliminate bots, blocking the biggest entry point.

With these six cuts—from bots to incentive mechanisms, automation tools, covert ads, targeted promotions, to API restrictions—X has progressively tightened control over crypto content.

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

X refuses free riding, welcomes paid promotion

These rule changes are reshaping the cost structure of crypto marketing. Over the past few years, the main channels for crypto projects to acquire users on X were threefold:

• InfoFi platforms incentivizing users to post for visibility,

• KOLs doing covert promotions without disclosure,

• Automation tools flooding popular posts with traffic.

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

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

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

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

X’s advertising policy for crypto ads has actually been loosening. 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, and ads for crypto exchanges and wallets have expanded from a dozen markets to countries 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 continue to grow— a common monetization path for all content platforms:

First, cultivate a free content ecosystem to attract users and creators; once network effects are established and creators depend on the platform, gradually tighten organic distribution and shift traffic to 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 marketing to advertising.

X’s current approach to crypto content is essentially the same operation.

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:

1. Increased customer acquisition costs.

Previously, a crypto project could rely on InfoFi points to incentivize tens of thousands to generate buzz on X; now, that route is closed.

Official KOL promotions will become more transparent after disclosure features launch, but posts marked “ad” will see trust and engagement decline. Projects will need to increase budgets or accept reduced effectiveness.

2. Repricing of 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 space for “seemingly organic but actually ads” shrinks, and KOLs will shift from “helping disguise content” to “maximizing conversions from labeled ads.”

The former is based on information asymmetry pricing; the latter on performance-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.

3. Re-evaluation of platform dependency risks.

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

A platform executive openly advising developers to switch to competitors indicates X is comfortable with crypto projects shifting away, 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 necessarily a bad thing.

Previously, about six out of ten posts on crypto Twitter might have been paid, but no one would tell you. With the disclosure feature, at least you can distinguish between promotion and genuine opinions. The information environment becomes cleaner, and judgment costs decrease.

Of course, the tightening coincides with the bear market.

Bear markets naturally reduce marketing budgets, fewer projects are willing to spend on promotion, and the feed becomes quieter. Whether a clean environment results from rules or market sentiment, only a bull run can truly verify.

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

The old logic was “the loudest voice wins”; the new one is “who pays, who has a voice.”