The cryptocurrency industry has been eagerly awaiting a decision from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) regarding the first spot-based Bitcoin ETF in the U.S. for the past six months. Shortly after the market closed yesterday, approval was announced on the official Twitter account, only to be deleted minutes later.
The verified Twitter account of the SEC stated that the agency had approved Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered securities exchanges. An image of Chairman Gary Gensler with a quote about the alleged milestone for digital asset trading was included. However, minutes later, Gensler stated via his personal Twitter profile that the announcement was a false report from a hacker.
The Bitcoin price immediately reacted to the Twitter post with a rally of around 2% to 48,000 USD. However, skepticism quickly grew and the surge lasted only four minutes. Traders gradually realized that it was a false report. The Bitcoin price corrected by -6.17%.
Since the false news only appeared on Twitter, the market reaction was largely moderate. Around 65 million USD in derivative positions were liquidated in the 20 minutes around the Bitcoin ETF announcement. In comparison, on volatile trading days like last Wednesday, liquidation figures are significantly in the hundreds of millions.
In a post-mortem, an official channel of the Twitter team confirmed the malicious takeover of the SEC profile. A preliminary investigation revealed that the compromise was due to a takeover of the SEC account’s phone number. The Twitter team also confirmed the lack of a two-factor authentication (2FA) setup. Two-factor authentication is a security measure where users must provide two different forms of identification – typically a password and a temporary code on a mobile phone.
This is crucial in preventing the popular SIM swap attack. A SIM swap is a fraudulent technique where a hacker convinces a mobile service provider to transfer a victim’s phone number to a new SIM card under the attacker’s control, allowing them to intercept calls and messages.
Setting up two-factor authentication is even more critical for official channels when false reports can impact the market.
This News Article was automatically generated by Bob the Bot (AI)
| Information | Details |
|---|---|
| Geography | North America |
| Countries | 🇺🇸 |
| Sentiment | negative |
| Relevance Score | 1 |
| People | Gary Gensler |
| Companies | US-Börsenaufsicht (SEC), Twitter |
| Currencies | united states dollar, Bitcoin |
| Securities | None |
