In what is turning out to be an early April Fool’s Day joke on everyone involved, it would seem that the U.S Securities and Exchange Commission has, in fact, NOT approved spot Bitcoin ETFs. Less than 30 mins ago, a tweet from the SEC’s official X (Formerly known as Twitter) account claimed the following,
However, the tweet in question has since been deleted and refuted by Gary Gensler, Chair of the United States SEC himself. According to Gensler,
“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.”
Needless to say, the reactions were quick to change. The community sentiment quickly changed from one of euphoria and elation to one of disappointment. And yet, despite a confirmation from the Chair himself, there are still people who are refusing to believe what happened.
For instance, in response to Gensler’s tweet, Bankless’s Ryan Sean Adams tweeted,
how do we know this account's not compromised??
— RYAN SΞAN ADAMS – rsa.eth (@RyanSAdams) January 9, 2024
Jokes aside, there may be other implications associated with this incident too with Securities lawyers telling FOX Business,
“… the @SECGov will have to investigate itself for market manipulation after moving the price of $BTC up and down following the hacked tweet that it had approved the first spot BTC ETF and then saying it was fake. That said, for the SEC not to approve tomorrow would be unprecedented.”
Additionally, conspiracy theories are doing the rounds too, with VanEck’s Gabor Gurbacs speculating that this could be an inside job. He speculated that a way “to stop or delay a Bitcoin ETF is to create an event like this.” A more rational explanation, as he himself conceded, is that the message was published sooner than it was supposed to. On the subject of this being an inside job, he went on to add,
“It would be unreasonable to delay… and this event should change nothing IMO. However, nothing surprises me anymore.”
The episode had another glaring impact on the market –
😮 In a shock for #crypto investors, @GaryGensler claims that the @SECGov's #X account, which stated that highly anticipated #ETF's have been approved, was hacked. This has caused over $300M in $BTC markets to be liquidated. Nearly 3 months, a similar inaccurate post
(Cont) 👇 pic.twitter.com/tLQzM1eXc9
— Santiment (@santimentfeed) January 9, 2024
At this point in time, it’s unclear who is responsible behind this prank. At the time of writing, no details had been shared by Gensler, the SEC, or any law enforcement agency.
What is evident, however, is that someone exploited the sentiment of the crypto-community at large.
