The official Twitter account of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) was hacked yesterday, with scammers posting unauthorized messages to its more than 660,000 followers.
The false message, which has now been deleted and claimed that the SEC had approved the listing and trading of a spot Bitcoin ETF, caused the Bitcoin market price to immediately jump to nearly $48,000.
The tweet was accompanied by an image quoting SEC Chairman Gary Gensler talking about “approval.” Frankly, there’s not much in this tweet that would arouse suspicion among typical Twitter users — even those who think they know better about security.
To add even more twists to the story, this trader has been speculating for weeks that the SEC would approve an exchange-traded fund tracking the value of Bitcoin this week — possibly even today.
However, Gensler posted from his own Twitter account comfirmed The news is false, no decision has been announced, and the SEC’s official account has been hacked.
“The @SECGov Twitter account was compromised and unauthorized tweets were posted,” Gensele wrote. “The SEC has not yet approved the listing and trading of spot Bitcoin exchange-traded products.”
Once it regained control of its account (which happened fairly quickly compared to typical Twitter account breaches), the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Confirmed on its official account It has been compromised, using the same wording as the Chairman.
As the truth emerged, Bitcoin’s price fell again, potentially causing some investors to suffer financial losses.
At least one scammer, always opportunistic, created a fake SEC account on Twitter, where they tweeted an apology for the incident and invited anyone who lost money to the hack to visit the refund website – Of course, this is a refund site in itself. scam.
If any other organization publishes information that causes significant movements in financial markets, they will be investigated for market manipulation.
Who would conduct such an investigation into market manipulation? Well, that will be the job of the SEC itself.
The irony is lost on no one, as we wait to see whether the SEC announces it will launch its own investigation into the incident…
us politician and lawyer A thorough investigation into what went wrong has been called for.
