A number of major Twitter accounts, including the official accounts of former U.S. President Barack Obama, whose account is the most followed on the platform; his former running mate and current U.S. presidential candidate Joe Biden; rapper Kanye West, billionaires Jeff Bezos, Mike Bloomberg, Bill Gates and Elon Musk; Silicon Valley giants Apple and Uber, were apparently hacked on Wednesday, with affected accounts seeking bitcoin donations.

Scammers tried to dupe people into sending cryptocurrency bitcoin in the hope of doubling their money.

Many of the tweets were swiftly deleted.

Twitter said in an email that it was looking into the matter and would issue a statement shortly.

Tesla was not immediately available for comment.

Twitter posts, which have been deleted, were fired off from an array of high-profile accounts telling people they had 30 minutes to send $1,000 in bitcoin in order to be sent back twice as much.

"This is a SCAM, DO NOT participate!" Gemini cryptocurrency exchange co-founder Cameron Winklevoss warned in a tweet from his official account at Twitter.

"This is the same attack/takeover that other major crypto twitter accounts are experiencing. Be vigilant!"

Comments and posts at Twitter indicated thousands of dollars in bitcoin may have been sent to the scammers' digital account.