A cryptocurrency analyst who claims he is losing up to US$20,000 (€17,055) monthly due to the suspension of his account with the X online platform has secured a temporary High Court order requiring his account be reinstated.
Eduoardo Jardel Furlan Farina, with 170,000 X followers, is also concerned some of his followers have suffered financial losses from engaging with some of the approximately 400 impostor accounts, Mr Justice Max Barrett heard.
Barrister Michael O’Doherty, for Mr Farina, said his X account was suspended possibly in the mistaken belief it was an impersonator account.
Mr Farina estimates he is losing US$15,000-20,000 dollars monthly due to the suspension, imposed on July 17th, and to X’s failure to block the impersonation accounts, counsel said.
Mr Farina’s losses include benefits from commercial partnerships across his social media accounts and from sponsored referrals to cryptocurrency related websites for third parties.
While Mr Farina also has a TikTok account and a YouTube channel, which are stull functioning, his X account was the main focus of his business, counsel said.
Given the number of impersonation accounts, Mr Farina is also concerned his followers will increasingly start to follow those, which are often set up for malicious purposes to defraud users.
The “most egregious” aspect of X’s response to efforts by Mr Farina and his solicitors to have his account restored and the fake accounts blocked, is that the platform appears to be dealing with his client’s correspondence via robots, Mr O’Doherty said.
It was “a sad state of affairs” his client had to come to court to compel X to have a human deal with his complaint.
Having heard the ex parte application on Thursday, Mr Justice Barrett said he was satisfied to grant interim injunctions, returnable to next week, requiring X to reinstate Mr Farina’s account and block the impersonation accounts.
Solicitor Rory Knight, of Lavelle Partners LLP, said in an affidavit that Mr Farina, who lives in Athens, Greece, is a content creator, cryptocurrency expert and analyst.
Mr Farina had in 2012 set up an account with the defendant, then known as Twitter, and known as X from July 2023.
In 2012-2025 Mr Farina developed his account into one of the most influential XRP-related profiles on the social media platform.
XRP is a cryptocurrency used by a platform called the XRP Ledger. Mr Farina used his X account to provide advice to would-be investors in XRP, the solicitor said. He had in 2022 obtained a “blue tick” for his account, meaning it was verified as authentic.
Mr Knight said both Mr Farina and X are in a contractual relationship and are bound to comply with the terms and conditions of use of the platform, known as the X rules. Due to the popularity of Mr Farina’s X account, several hundred impersonation accounts had been set up purporting to be Mr Farina’s account, with the intention of depriving him of revenue and/or damaging his reputation, Mr Knight said.
Despite numerous requests from Mr Farina to block those, and prevent their reappearance, X had failed or refused to do so, he said.
Mr Farina’s account was suspended on July 17th without any warning for “ban evasion”, a platform rule that prohibits account holders from circumventing X enforcement actions, Mr Knight said. Mr Farina immediately tried to contact X to appeal the suspension, which he believed was done in error, perhaps in the belief his account was an impersonation account, but X responded with automated replies.
Mr Knight said he wrote to X on behalf of Mr Farina but received an apparently automated email response stating the account would remain suspended for violation of X’s ban evasion rules. It appeared no human had read the warning letter he had sent, the solicitor said.