The price of cryptocurrencies was reported to have swung sharply on Tuesday after a false post on the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s official X account, claimed the regulator had approved the first-ever US spot bitcoin exchange traded funds.
The commission, who later deleted the post, said its account had been “compromised”
The post said the regulator “grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges”.
The post was immediately picked up and quoted by social media users and business news outlets.
The SEC’s chairperson, Gary Gensler also posted a message refuting the erroneous announcement on his personal X account
He said “The @SECGov twitter account was compromised, and an unauthorized tweet was posted. The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products.”
Also, a SEC spokesperson “The SEC has determined that there was unauthorized access to and activity on the @SECGov x.com account by an unknown party for a brief period of time shortly after 4 pm ET.
“That unauthorized access has been terminated. The SEC will work with law enforcement and our partners across government to investigate the matter and determine appropriate next steps relating to both the unauthorized access and any related misconduct.”
Later on, Tuesday, X said it had completed a preliminary probe into the false post on the SEC’s account and found that it was not due to a breach of the social media platform’s systems.
“We can confirm that the account @SECGov was compromised and we have completed a preliminary investigation
“Based on our investigation, the compromise was not due to any breach of X’s systems, but rather due to an unidentified individual obtaining control over a phone number associated with the @SECGov account through a third party
“We can also confirm that the account did not have two-factor authentication enabled at the time the account was compromised.”
Bitcoin jumped to almost $48,000 (£37,800) immediately after the erroneous post before falling back to around $46,000.
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