Female KOL Tiffany Fong, who has 340K followers on Twitter, recently found herself in a bizarre scandal. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Musk had DM'd Tiffany seeking offspring but was rejected.

From once being SBF's "confidante" to Musk's "procreation target," everything about Tiffany Fong seems chaotic and disordered, yet it highly aligns with the underlying logic of internet storytelling: she, in an outsider's posture, becomes an unexpected protagonist in every storm. These flashpoints were never truly led by her; she was only constantly embroiled in them and then, under the social media spotlight, was assigned one label after another.

Without a team, official resources, or capital backing, not even Tiffany herself can say why she was trusted by SBF, why Musk spoke to her, or why she always finds herself on the edge of a storm. She is not an insider, yet she lives in the projection of the situation.

Rights Protection Blogger Origin

In the crypto winter of 2022, some went bankrupt, some went to jail, and some built their own careers on the ruins of crypto.

A previously unknown young woman, Tiffany Fong, entered the public eye due to an expose on Celsius Network.

She did not come from traditional media, nor has she ever worked in a financial institution or newsroom, nor has she even had a 9-to-5 job. Yet, it was this atypical finance amateur who, through disclosure after disclosure, gradually became the spokesperson in the eyes of Celsius victims and unexpectedly began her content creation career in the crypto industry.

Tiffany Fong was born in Las Vegas, her parents divorced, and her upbringing was full of twists and turns. She majored in Communication at the University of Southern California, admitting that she initially chose this path because the courses were relatively easy, allowing more time for socializing and traveling. After graduation, she backpacked around the world for several years, sustained her life by establishing multiple online stores, achieved a certain level of financial freedom, and thus was able to fully focus on the development of the crypto industry.

In 2011, Tiffany received a Bitcoin from a relative, which she never cashed out. During the bull market in 2021, she deposited over $200,000 worth of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other crypto assets into Celsius Network, a crypto lending platform that promised up to an 18% deposit annual interest rate. However, the good times did not last long. In June 2022, Celsius suddenly suspended withdrawals and declared bankruptcy the following month, freezing all of Tiffany's digital assets.

For her, this was not just an investment loss, but also a collision with a low point in her life. At that time, she was going through a romantic breakup, "That was the lowest time in my life," she recalled. Initially, she simply spent each day repeatedly searching for news about Celsius, trying to understand what had happened to her assets. Gradually, she started to organize the information she found into tweets, posting them on Twitter and Youtube, attempting to connect with other victims.

Her tweets caught the attention of Celsius internal employees, and one employee reached out to her, anonymously providing a recording of an all-hands internal company meeting discussing a restructuring plan among top executives.

Initially, Tiffany was skeptical of the audio, but after confirming multiple times that the content matched and that the voice of the then-CEO of the company, Alex Mashinsky, was indeed present in the recording, she realized the significance of this material. She decided to provide the recording to The New York Times, and the media outlet subsequently conducted an in-depth report on it.

This public disclosure became her true moment in the spotlight. With more whistleblowers coming forward, she began releasing sensitive information including executive wallet addresses, potential investor bid proposals, and made her stance clear—not driven by political motives or a desire to be a fighter, she simply believed that since everyone's money was locked in Celsius, as creditors, they deserved to know what was happening behind the scenes.

From a disillusioned investor seeking help to passively becoming a hub of advocacy information, Tiffany Fong, without any institutional endorsement, stood her ground in a corner of the crypto world through continuous updates and disclosures. She never planned to be a whistleblower, but the Celsius saga undoubtedly marked a turning point in her life journey.

Accidentally becoming the person closest to SBF than any media outlet

After Tiffany Fong publicly disclosed the Celsius executive meeting, FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried followed her on Twitter.

It was the first time she realized her name was part of a larger narrative. Initially, she didn't pay much attention, just politely replied with a "Thank you for the follow," to which the other party responded, "Your leaks were quite interesting." They exchanged a few brief pleasantries and then went back to their respective lives. She didn't continue to inquire until a few months later when FTX collapsed, and everything suddenly restarted.

On November 11, 2022, FTX announced bankruptcy. That evening, Tiffany dug up an old private message and, with the mindset of "he probably won't reply anyway," sent a message to SBF asking if he would be willing to be interviewed, including a somewhat friendly greeting: "Hope you are doing okay."

She had no idea that five days later, SBF would actually reply to her—not only that, but he also gave his phone number, saying, "I have some time in the next hour, we can chat."

At that time, Tiffany was on a date at a bar in Brooklyn. When the message popped up on her phone, she was shocked. Tiffany's date was also an FTX user who had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Upon hearing her story, he urged her to go home immediately, saying, "What are you still doing here? Go back!" And so, with some drunkenness and no preparation, she called Sam, completing her first truly meaningful "interview"—he was the central figure in the most sensational financial world at that time.

This call was later posted on her YouTube channel, and one segment, in particular, caused a sensation. SBF admitted to secretly donating a large amount of political funding to the Republican Party, a statement that was later included in the Federal Election Commission's formal complaint against him. However, at the time of interviewing SBF, Tiffany had no idea what consequences that statement would bring.

On November 20, Tiffany released a second interview of their conversation, shortly before SBF's mainstream media appearances such as The New York Times DealBook Summit. This conversation was more in-depth and intimate. Tiffany gradually realized that SBF seemed to be looking for a listener, not a reporter, not a lawyer, but a stranger without a stance.

SFB also explicitly stated that he liked Tiffany not coming from mainstream media, where "there's no editor to report to," and she could freely express herself. His trust in her, to some extent, also stemmed from this non-institutional expression space.

However, along with this came misunderstandings and labels from the outside world. The Daily Mail reported on her with the headline "Sexy Crypto Influencer's Late-Night Visit to FTX Bad Boy," pulling up old photos from her Instagram but not mentioning anything about the content of her reporting. At that time, Tiffany was not yet accustomed to the logic of these tabloid media outlets. The interpretations that sexualized and sensationalized her momentarily made her feel angry and hurt.

Ten Visits to Palo Alto

After being extradited back to the United States, SBF was placed under house arrest at his parents' home in Palo Alto, California. Tiffany thought their interaction would end there. However, to her surprise, on the night he returned home, she received a message from SBF at 3 a.m.: "Hey, I'm finally back online."

She tentatively asked if she could visit, and SBF once again readily agreed. After the first visit, she simply moved to San Francisco, where she rented a short-term house and commuted south via Uber every week to have face-to-face conversations with SBF dozens of times.

SBF's parents' home under lockdown

Tiffany and SBF discussed not only the case but also his childhood insecurities, social void, loneliness in recent years, and the twists of fate that turned former close allies into trial witnesses. SBF admitted that he had almost no real friends, and at that time, Tiffany became a confidante whom he could briefly trust.

However, Tiffany always remained cautious about this relationship. She knew that SBF was not straightforward, attempting to use her to convey some form of public opinion and sometimes hinting, "Could you leak something." But she was never willing to be completely manipulated and avoided publishing too much of what he said during his house arrest. The Department of Justice even contacted her, requesting her records related to SBF, which also made her understand her unique position in this event.

Being a "friend and a journalist" may be the most fitting description of this relationship. From a coincidental late-night phone call to multiple authentic and intricate meetings, Tiffany occupied an intimate yet aloof position in this epic collapse of the crypto world. She witnessed an empire fall and was involved—not as a manipulator, nor as a judge.

Rumor or Existential Crisis

After SBF was sentenced to prison, Tiffany Fong did not take advantage of the situation as the outside world imagined. She did not sign with a media company or secure a spot on mainstream financial television shows' recurring guest lists. Instead, she returned to a near-isolated state. After the long drama surrounding the FTX collapse concluded, she became the awkward person standing on the fringe of the theater, unsure of where to go and with no one to tell her how to deliver her lines.

She continued to be active on Twitter, with platform content creation revenue as her main source of income, making a living by tweeting, a semi-joking self-definition. She would write about cryptocurrency, electoral politics, and even conspiracy theories, occasionally stirring controversies and bringing in waves of traffic.

“Every crypto bull run has to have its own drama.” She said this with a smile in a podcast, but underneath the tone was one of weariness. She knew that these cycles come and go, and her life seemed to revolve around these ups and downs.

Refusing to be a “Musketeer” Baby-Making Machine

What once again brought Tiffany into the public eye was a bizarre scandal.

A few days ago, The Wall Street Journal published an article titled “How Elon Musk Deals with his ‘Numerous’ Children and Their Mothers,” describing how the world's richest man managed a dozen children and their “harem disputes” while running his companies and advising Trump; he also recently underwent a paternity test with a right-wing influencer, Ashley St. Clair, who claimed to be carrying Musk's child, over issues of money and privacy.

In this article, the author claimed that Musk sent a private message to Tiffany on Twitter, asking her if she would be willing to have a child for him. The author stated that Tiffany did not continue the relationship with Musk because she aspired to have children in a more traditional nuclear family setting. However, she confided her thoughts on this matter to a few friends. Upon learning that Tiffany had disclosed this request to others, Musk reprimanded her for not being discreet enough and unfollowed her.

At the end of last year, Tiffany and Musk had very frequent interactions on Twitter, to the extent that someone even created a topic on Polymarket, betting on whether Tiffany was actually pregnant with Musk's child.

In a recent podcast episode, the host brought up this scandal and asked Tiffany if she was really pregnant. Sitting upright, Tiffany announced, “I officially declare on this podcast: I am not pregnant.”

To understand how Tiffany became involved with Musk, we have to go back to the October 2023 trial of SBF. Just as the trial had ended and SBF's parents were preparing to leave, Tiffany intended to console the elderly couple. Unexpectedly, SBF's mother, Barbara Fried, started shouting and screaming at Tiffany emotionally, blaming Tiffany's reporting for harming SBF.

Later, Tiffany posted a tweet on Twitter recounting the incident, and Musk replied to a FOX article in the comments, stating that this was the article SBF's mother referred to as the one that ruined her son.

In the following months, Musk frequently appeared in Tiffany's Twitter comments until the recent scandal, which led both of them to coincidentally lambaste the mainstream media.

Crypto Free Spirit

The last time Tiffany Fong spoke to SBF was when he was confined to his parents' house in California, where they met ten times in that house. She still remembers the atmosphere of that house, remembers his parents quietly closing the door upon seeing her, remembers the silent space that was constantly under scrutiny.

After SBF's imprisonment, Tiffany's persona lost its anchor; she was no longer the grassroots whistleblower challenging Ponzi schemes, nor was she the sole outsider in SBF's private conversations. Her identity became a blurry shadow: not a journalist, not a victim, not a venture capitalist in the crypto community. She said she was somewhat mired in an existential crisis: "During the Celsius phase, it was anger-driven, during the FTX phase, it was driven by curiosity, and now... it's just tweeting."

The present-day Tiffany Fong still tweets every day, sometimes with images, sometimes commenting on current events, sometimes just dropping a witty joke to stir up some ripples. She lives in her original apartment, leads a frugal life, not rich but not poor, nor can it be called free. She is no longer frequently quoted in the mainstream, nor has she truly found a new role to replace her identity from the FTX era.

She witnessed an empire's collapse firsthand and became one of the rare unofficial chroniclers of that collapse. Today, as the empire returns to dust, journalists return to their newsrooms, judges return to their courtrooms, the crypto world continues its ups and downs. And she, a person who belongs nowhere, can only continue to wander on the timeline of social platforms, like a piece of unclaimed driftweed, hearing her echoes grow lonelier as the hype fades away.

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tdpWqVkXg6o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3VYzYVmYLgQ&t=62s

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/tiffany-fong-crypto-influencer-sam-bankman-fried-1234862132/

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