The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (U.S. SEC) has debunked the spot Bitcoin ETFs approval update released on its X account on Tuesday.
According to Gary Gensler, the U.S. SEC official X account was compromised on Tuesday night, causing a commotion in the crypto community and high volatility in cryptoasset prices.
SEC X Account Compromised
The mysterious hacker wrote that all spot Bitcoin Exchange-Traded Funds proposals from several global asset managers were approved for listing and trading.
The now-deleted tweet read: “Today the SEC grants approval for Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges. The approved Bitcoin ETFs will be subject to ongoing surveillance and compliance measures to ensure continued investor protection.”
While this news triggered excitement in the crypto community, the 33rd Chairman of the Regulatory Commission commented about 20 minutes later, saying the update was ‘unauthorized’ and false. To clear the misinformation, he submitted that no spot Bitcoin ETF was approved as of Tuesday night.
In the words of Gensler: “The SEC 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.”
Crypto Community Reacts
As expected, several industry players have dropped their take on the questionable incident that resulted in huge liquidations in the crypto market.
On one hand, many market participants have called out the SEC for outright market manipulation as there is no proof of a hack.
According to FOX senior correspondent Charles Gasparino, Securities lawyers said the SEC must investigate itself for market manipulation after impacting the price of BTC. The update further stated that the SEC not approving spot Bitcoin ETFs on Jan. 10 would be unusual.
Responding to the matter, U.S. Senator Bill Hagerty said the colossal market-moving mistake by the SEC was unacceptable, adding that “Congress needs answers on what just happened.”
On the other hand, Digital Asset Manager Eric Weiss believes a hack never happened. According to him, a drafted tweet was released prematurely by someone with access to the SEC X account.
Notably, cryptocurrencies suffered high price fluctuations because of the false ETF approval post, leading to huge liquidations in the derivative market. In particular, BTC dipped to $44,748 and then rebounded to nearly $48,000 on Tuesday. But at press time, the leading cryptocurrency is trading for $45,766 as Bitcoin’s whale activity escalates.
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