Today, the Twitter account of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was compromised, leading to a false announcement regarding the approval of spot bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs). This unauthorised tweet, which claimed that the SEC had approved these highly anticipated bitcoin ETFs, was not issued by the SEC or its staff. The tweet was available for about 30 minutes before being deleted. This incident caused a brief spike in Bitcoin’s price, reaching near $48,000, before falling back down to around $45,700.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler confirmed that the SEC Twitter account was compromised and clarified that the SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products. The false tweet led to a significant amount of confusion and misinformation among investors and the public.
It’s noteworthy that the SEC has been expected to make a decision on several spot Bitcoin ETF applications, and the market has been closely watching for this decision. However, as of now, the SEC has not approved any spot Bitcoin ETFs, and the unauthorised tweet was a result of the Twitter account being hacked