SEC X Account Breached, Posting Approval Of Bitcoin ETFs And Evaporating Bitcoin Value

Early in January, Bitcoin saw a healthy spike up to $45,000 following some excitement surrounding Bitcoin exchange-traded-funds. This trend has continued with some ups and downs in the middle, but regardless, people have been rather excited about the prospects. So much so that one person elected to hack the SEC X account and post a fake notice saying Bitcoin ETFs were approved, leading to some cryptocurrency market trouble.

In the afternoon of January 9th, the @SECGov account posted that the SEC granted approval for Bitcoin ETFs with a realistic looking quote image of the SEC Chair Gary Gensler. Shortly after that, Chair Gensler posted a message saying that the SEC account had been compromised, which was followed by the original tweet being deleted and the SEC seemingly regaining control of the account. In that time, Bitcoin's value dropped around $1,500 to $2,000 depending on where you look, indicating a mass selloff upon that announcement.


After the breach, X’s Safety account began an investigation, which revealed that the SEC account was compromised due to an individual “obtaining control over a phone number associated with the @SECGov account through a third party.” Further, it was also revealed that the SEC account did not have two-factor authentication enabled when the compromise happened, making it easier to breach the account.


Of course, this serves as a good reminder to enable two-factor authentication and practice good cybersecurity hygiene, but it also serves as a good litmus test for the Bitcoin market. If an ETF approval arrives, we could see significant Bitcoin selloffs, leading to a surrendering of all the prior gains. It will certainly be interesting to follow, so stay tuned to HotHardware for updates on this evolving cryptocurrency development.