In a seeming coincidence, Twitter Inc. suspended the account of a prominent Bitfinex critic on the same day that Gab, a Twitter alternative that claims to be dedicated to free speech, announced it had raised $4.8 million in a crowdfunding campaign.

On the Twitter front, Bitfinex’ed was suspended without explanation. The Twitter account, run by an anonymous critic of the Bitfinex exchange, was the first to allege that the company had been fraudulently issuing Tether tokens, resulting in rampant bitcoin speculation. The same accusations are now being investigated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

In an interview with The Next Web, the anonymous critic said Twitter has yet to clarify the reasons for the suspension and had only provided a link to a page detailing some of the most common reasons for suspensions – including spam, compromised accounts and abusive behavior. In a later interview with Bitcoin Magazine, the anonymous critic claimed that “Bitfinex trolls are claiming my tweets contain private information,” and that his tweets were being reported and his account was being spammed.

The account appears to have returned, however, with the critic doubling down on his accusations against Bitfinex.

Meanwhile, Gab, a Twitter alternative often linked to members of the so-called “alt-right,” announced that it had raised $4.8 million in a crowdfunding campaign and that it was seeking to raise $10 million more in an initial coin offering.

According to VentureBeat, the $4.8 million fundraising came from more than 1,000 investors. That was on top of a previous crowdfunding campaign that had raised $1.1 million.

Gab launched in 2016 as a Twitter alternative with the ability to vote on posts, giving it a touch of the popular news aggregation and discussion site Reddit as well. Users post “Gabs,” which have a 300-character limit, and they can follow other users and be followed, upvote and downvote Gabs, visit Top Gabs ranked on those votes and view Gabs in chronological order.

Its free speech stance has seen the site labeled as being “far right-wing,” as many of those banned by Twitter in its various crackdowns, its most recent in December, have joined and are now active there. The founders of Gab, however, insist it’s a neutral, free-speech platform that is trying to build an advertising-free business. One previously said that “Gab is not for any particular group of people, political leaning, race, beliefs, or anything… anybody is welcome to express themselves on Gab.”

Image: Gab