A previous MarketWatch report and breaking-news alert inaccurately indicated, citing a post on the social-media platform X, that the Securities and Exchange Commission had approved the launch of exchange-traded funds tied to bitcoin. Chair Gary Gensler said the regulator’s account on X, formerly Twitter, had been compromised and the purported news was not true.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s official account on X, formerly known as Twitter, was compromised on Tuesday and published an unauthorized post that the agency had approved the launch of exchange-traded funds investing directly in bitcoin.
But in fact, the agency has not approved any spot bitcoin ETFs, and the earlier post, now deleted, was sent by an unauthorized user, SEC Chair Gary Gensler said Tuesday.
“The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products,” Gensler said on X.
“The unauthorized tweet regarding bitcoin ETFs was not made by the SEC or its staff,” a spokesperson at the SEC confirmed to MarketWatch via email.
Bitcoin’s price
BTCUSD,
briefly shot more than 2% higher Tuesday afternoon after the unauthorized post went out, before falling back. The cryptocurrency is down 2.4% over the past 24 hours to around $45,840, according to CoinDesk data.
Crypto-market participants have widely anticipated the SEC to approve a spot bitcoin ETF soon. The agency has until Jan. 10 to make a decision on the bitcoin ETF application filed by ARK Investment and 21Shares.
The agency first approved a bitcoin futures ETF in late 2021, but has not approved any ETFs investing directly in the cryptocurrency, arguing that bitcoin spot markets could not be sufficiently surveilled to prevent fraud and manipulation.
A federal judge ruled last August that the SEC’s reasons for denying an application by Grayscale Investments to list a bitcoin spot ETF were “arbitrary and capricious” and in violation of federal administrative law.
The judge argued that the SEC’s decision to approve two bitcoin futures funds but to deny a bitcoin spot fund was a breach of the principle in the law that agencies “must treat like cases alike” because prices in the bitcoin futures market closely tracked those in the spot market.
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