On Tuesday evening, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that its the price. .
Meltem Erdem is a cybersecurity columnist at CoinDesk Türkiye.
In a now-deleted tweet, the financial regulator falsely announced: “Today the SEC grants approval to #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all national registered securities exchanges. Approved Bitcoin ETFs will be subject to ongoing monitoring and compliance procedures to ensure continued investor protection.”
The tweet was quickly removed. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler Certain The message should not have gone out, and no consent should have been given.
While the incident certainly raises concerns about how the SEC will secure its social media accounts as well as the protections needed to prevent market manipulation in the digital age, the bigger question raised by the bogus tweet is how the market will react when the Bitcoin fund is shut down. Ultimate rolling. consent.
Through this fake tweet, we were able to see how the market might react, which may have been the point of this trick.
Bitcoin’s price rose to $47,900 immediately after the first tweet, then fell 1.5% to $46,247 after the news broke.
There’s a lot riding on these funds, and the market has spent months (if not years) waiting for the SEC’s decision on a number of U.S. Bitcoin ETF applications. , known for its anti-crypto stance, may reject requests again after this incident. The committee is scheduled to make its decision by Wednesday.
Bitcoin rose 164% last year after the market crash that began at the end of 2021, largely due to growing hype around ETFs. While there are good reasons to believe that spot Bitcoin ETFs will bring capital into the sector, many expect the moment of approval to be a “sell-the-news” event.
Spot Bitcoin ETFs are a way for investors to gain exposure to Bitcoin price movements, without having to purchase the cryptocurrency directly. There are currently 13 live apps in the US, including from Wall Street giants including BlackRock, VanEck and Fidelity as well as a number of local cryptocurrency companies. The funds will own actual Bitcoin, and will issue stocks that track the price of the coins – just like any other ETF, which can track commodities, stocks and/or indices.
If approved, spot ETFs would make it easier for a wide range of investors to speculate on Bitcoin, including large companies that want to build Bitcoin volatility into their portfolios. In other words, these funds could bring cryptocurrencies into the mainstream, hence the anticipation and trading before SEC approval or disapproval.
The SEC, in general, has taken a hard line against cryptocurrencies, though its recent legal defeat against Grayscale, which filed to convert its massive GBTC trust into an ETF structure, has strongly boosted the industry’s hopes of approving such a product. .
If the agency gives the green light, the next question will be how much capital the ETFs will attract in the early days and years to come. It also remains to be seen how long speculation around spot ETFs will continue.
There is a certain irony in the fake market-moving Bitcoin ETF announcement, as the main reason the SEC has resisted approving a Bitcoin ETF is the potential for market manipulation. After investigation, X He said The SEC account was hijacked “due to an unknown person taking control of a phone number associated with the SECGov account through a third party.”
The number associated with the account appears to have had a SIM card swapped. We were also told that two-factor authentication was not enabled.
Although this hack isn’t exactly the kind of thing the SEC likely has in mind when raising concerns for ETF applicants, SIM swapping is common in cryptocurrencies. In fact, it is one of the most common ways people lose their cryptocurrencies. You can find CoinDesk Turkey’s article on how to prevent SIM swap attacks here.