Within minutes, SEC Chair Gary Gensler jumped in from his own X account to clarify that the SEC’s post was inaccurate, even while the message remained up on X for roughly 30 minutes. “The @SECGov twitter account was compromised, and an unauthorized tweet was posted,” Gensler wrote on X. Bitcoin’s price tumbled.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission said its account on social network X was “compromised,” leading to a spike in the price of Bitcoin and raising fresh questions about X’s reliability as a source of information and the strength of its security practices.
The incident, one of the most consequential breaches in years on the platform formerly known as Twitter, began with a post on the SEC’s official verified account, which inaccurately shared that the regulator had approved spot-Bitcoin exchange-traded funds — a decision that had been anticipated for later this week. The price of Bitcoin quickly shot up more than 2.5% as news of the post spread online and via media outlets, including Bloomberg News, that were watching the SEC’s feed for such an announcement.
