Why Are You Following a Crypto Account on Twitter? It Used to Be Ryan Lochte

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A few of our eagle-eyed readers noticed something unusual on their Twitter timelines of late: a flood of Tweets from a cryptocurrency hype machine.

If you’ve seen the Tweets, then you know what I mean.

This account is followed by *a lot* of your favorite swimming accounts, including @swimswamnews, the International Swimming League, Reece Whitley, Olympians from all over, and even official USA Swimming accounts.

So has swimming gone crypto-crazy? Or is something else at play?

It turns out that the account, which now runs under the handle @cryptokingsfirst, used to be the account for one of the most decorated swimmers in history: Ryan Lochte.

The account, as of publishing, has 926,000 followers.

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 news about cryptocurrency and NFTs.

Among the surviving interactions are a RT from fellow Florida Gator Matt Elliott from 2015 celebrating Dan Wallace’s World Championship, and ‘likes’ of a few old Tweets about Lochte’s time on Dancing With the Stars.

It is unclear who has taken over the account, but the individual identifies 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 crypto-currency 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 that they were sent by Lochte, including an ad for his sponsor, but SwimSwam could not confirm if that account, made in December 2021, was authentically Lochte.

We also couldn’t figure out if the account was sold or hacked, though we have reached out to Lochte’s representation to inquire.

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 turn their account over to the world of stonks and crypto: former US National Teamer Kendyl Stewart’s account grew to over 70,000 followers once it turned to crypto hyping and giveaways, but appears to have been suspended by Twitter sometime around May.

Stewart won three short course World Championship relay gold medals in 2018, a long course World Championship silver medal in the mixed 400 medley relay in 2015, and three Pan American Games gold medals in 2019. That included a win individually in the 100 fly at the 2019 Pan American Games.

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