The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that an announcement about bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on social media channel X was incorrect and that is probing the hack.
The US securities regulator said someone briefly accessed its X account on Tuesday and posted a fake message saying it had approved ETF for Bitcoin.
The SEC is expected to make a ruling on bitcoin ETFs soon, a move that is eagerly awaited by the crypto industry. As many as 13 companies have filed for a spot bitcoin ETF, a list that includes such bigwigs as BlackRock and Franklin Templeton.
After the post saying the SEC had approved bitcoin ETFs for trading was visible for nearly 30 minutes, it was deleted. A spokesperson said “The SEC’s @SECGov X/Twitter account has been compromised. The unauthorised tweet regarding bitcoin ETFs was not made by the SEC or its staff.”
As over a million people viewed the post, bitcoin price climbed briefly to over $48,000, before sliding to $45,937 following the SEC statement. From the market high rate, the cryptocurrency lost over $63 billion in its market value.
An SEC spokesperson told CNBC that the agency determined there had been unauthorised access to the regulator’s X account “by an unknown party” for a brief period just after 4 PM ET.
The agency added that the “unauthorised access has been terminated” and that it will “work with law enforcement and our partners across government to investigate the matter and determine appropriate next steps relating to both the unauthorised access and any related misconduct.”
The price of the largest cryptocurrency has been climbing in recent months, in part because of growing optimism that the so-called spot bitcoin ETFs would be approved. But the social media post by SEC took the industry by surprise.
The Elon Musk-owned X confirmed on Tuesday that the SEC’s account was compromised because an unidentified individual gained control over a phone number associated with the account through a third party. It also said in a post that the SEC did not have two-factor authentication enabled at the time the account was compromised.
Follow us on
