After many Twitter accounts belonging to Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Bill Gates among others were on Wednesday hacked to promote a bitcoin scam, the microblogging site said it is investigating the incident and taking steps to fix it.

In a first response after the incident, Twitter Support tweeted: "We are aware of a security incident impacting accounts on Twitter. We are investigating and taking steps to fix it. We will update everyone shortly."

A number of high profile Twitter accounts including that of US presidential hopeful Joe Biden, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates and of Apple were simultaneously hacked on Wednesday by attackers to carry out what appeared to be a cryptocurrency scam.

The accounts, along with those of former President Barack Obama, Kanye West, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos and Mike Bloomberg, posted similar tweets soliciting donations via Bitcoin to their verified profiles on Wednesday.

"Feeling grateful doubling all payments sent to my BTC address! You send $1,000, I send back $2,000! Only doing this for the next 30 minutes," Elon Musk now-deleted tweet read.

The accounts of Apple, Uber, and Kanye West have also been hacked and are promoting the show widespread the operation is, but it appears to be affecting major companies and extremely high-profile individuals.