No, the SEC has not (yet) approved bitcoin ETFs

Crypto advocates gunning for approval for bitcoin ETFs by the Securities and Exchange Commission got a false alarm on Tuesday afternoon. The SEC’s X account posted a message saying the regulator had approved them, but SEC Chair Gary Gensler quickly published a message on his own X account indicating the agency’s account had been hacked.

Crypto advocates gunning for approval for bitcoin ETFs by the Securities and Exchange Commission got a false alarm on Tuesday afternoon. The SEC’s X account posted a message saying the regulator had approved them, but SEC Chair Gary Gensler quickly published a message on his own X account indicating the agency’s account had been hacked. “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.” The SEC, which soon after posted a similar message on its account, did not immediately reply to a request for comment. Neither did X. The crypto community has been eagerly awaiting (and largely expecting) the SEC to finally approve the launch of bitcoin ETFs, which would make bitcoin investing more accessible to Main Street investors, without requiring them to own the digital asset directly. The price of Bitcoin, notoriously volatile, didn’t seem to go too wild in response to the false alarm. At 5:15 pm pm on Tuesday evening it was trading around $45,660, according to data from coinmarketcap.com. While the price has risen considerably in the past year, it’s still far below its all-time high of more than $68,000 hit in 2021. And some had a good sense of humor about the false messaging, with one person posting “spot bitcoin ETFs were approved for 0.07 scarmuccis.”