Countdown to ETF: SEC’s X Hacked, Chaos at the Rodeo

In a series of events today that were memorably described as a goat rodeo, the official SEC X Account appeared to announce that Bitcoin Spot ETFs had been approved.

However, 15 minutes later the SEC head Gary Gensler announced, “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.”

Despite the unfortunate goat rodeo, approval is still expected tomorrow. The announcement is due at 4pm ET time, according to sources, and trading will begin the following day. The price of Bitcoin surged quickly to $47,600 after the bogus announcement before dropping to around $45,500 after Gensler said “fake news.”

A working theory is that the SEC announcement on X was correct, but had mistakenly been scheduled a day early. “I think someone prepped a planned tweet and put wrong date, bc the tweet would have made PERFECT sense tomorrow at this time,” Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Eric Balchunas wrote on X. “The language sounds legit SEC-ish IMO vs a crypto knucklehead pulling a prank but I guess we’ll see.”

See you here again, same time tomorrow, hopefully with better news, and fewer goats.

We’ll leave the final word to Edward Snowden.