The real approval should come this afternoon.
A little drama aired in the cryptocurrency markets last night: it all started with a tweet on the SEC’s official X profile announcing the final approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs.
As soon as the tweet was posted, Bitcoin price immediately jumped from $46,700 to $47,900, recording the new yearly high of 2024. However, it was immediately clear that something was wrong, because that tweet seemed odd.
Bitcoin Price Boom after Fake News from the SEC on ETF Approval
The strange tweet, first of all, refers generically to Bitcoin ETFs, when in fact the approval refers specifically to ten applications made by ten different funds. The SEC will have to rule on each of them individually, and not generically on Bitcoin ETFs.
Furthermore, Bitcoin ETFs already exist in the US market, but are collateralized in futures contracts. So, the new thing about the approval of the ETFs is that they are collateralized in BTC, that is, Bitcoin in cash, but this important detail was not mentioned in the tweet.
The tweet also used the Bitcoin hashtag with a logo, which is very unusual for a government agency like the SEC. In fact, within a few minutes he realized that it was a fake tweet and the price of BTC returned to $46,700 just over five minutes later. It subsequently continued to fall to $45,000, before rising slightly to $46,000.
SEC: Real Approval of Bitcoin Spot ETFs
Considering what happened last night, it is possible to speculate that the publication of the actual news will not lead to a sale of the news, but perhaps another increase in the price of BTC.
On the other hand, there are many who say that in this period Bitcoin seems to have the potential to rise to $50,000. The fact is that these new Bitcoin spot ETFs could land on US stock exchanges as soon as tomorrow, and if they were to achieve immediate success, they could cause the price of BTC to rise to levels above current levels.
Therefore, it is possible that the sale of the news will occur with a delay, that is, perhaps from the weekend, when the stock exchanges will be closed. Yesterday’s incident should not affect today’s approval at all and, in fact, puts the SEC in an even more awkward position.
SEC’s Fool
In October, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler posted a tweet recommending enabling multi-factor authentication. Yesterday it was discovered that SEC Profile X was hacked precisely because they had not activated two-factor authentication.
X’s Safety account posted the following yesterday:
“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.”
Dismissal Risk
For several months, the United States Congress has been debating the removal of Gary Gensler from the presidency of the SEC. During his tenure, the agency lost two cases against two crypto companies. The first is the one that was lost against XRP, while the second is that it lost against Grayscale, and the one that gave the green light to the approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs.
After tonight’s likely approval of Bitcoin spot ETFs, in the event of an immediate success in the markets tomorrow, Gensler’s position would become even more unstable.
By Audy Castaneda
