The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said that it had not yet granted approval for spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETF) and that someone briefly hacked its X account and posted a fake tweet claiming it had approved it. 

The fake post from the SEC’s hacked account read: “Today the SEC grants approval for #Bitcoin ETFs for listing on all registered national securities exchanges…” An image of SEC Chair Gary Gensler was also attached. 

The fake post on the SEC’s X account had received at least 1 million views before it was no longer visible and appeared to have been deleted. In a post on his personal X account, Chair Gensler later clarified that the agency’s account was “compromised” and the tweet posted was “unauthorised”.

Following the fake post, the price of Bitcoin increased to $48,000 but then fell below the $46,000 level. Traders have been speculating for weeks for the agency’s approval of several products as soon as Wednesday. 

The social media platform announced that a preliminary investigation showed that the SEC’s account, even though secure, was compromised by a third party gaining access to an associated phone number. X’s head of business operations, Joe Benarroch, said that the company was investigating the “root cause” of the account compromise.