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SEC says it’s coordinating with FBI to investigate ‘compromised’ ETF tweet

  • January 9, 2024

The United States Securities and Exchange Commission announced it was coordinating efforts with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to investigate a tweet released from its X (formerly Twitter) account on Jan. 9.

In a Jan. 10 statement, the SEC reiterated that a Jan. 9 tweet claiming that the commission had approved spot Bitcoin

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exchange-traded funds in the United States was “unauthorized” and not “drafted or created” by SEC officials. SEC Chair Gary Gensler published an X post claiming the official SEC account had been “compromised” by an unnamed party.

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SEC says it’s coordinating with FBI to investigate ‘compromised’ ETF tweet

According to the SEC, it planned to investigate the tweet with the FBI and the commission’s Office of the Inspector General. The commission warned the public that any filing approving a rule change allowing the listing and trading of a spot Bitcoin ETF would be posted to its website, which it later published.

Related: FBI seizes almost $2M of crypto assets in 3 months

As of Jan. 10, spot BTC ETF offerings from ARK 21Shares, Invesco Galaxy, VanEck, WisdomTree, Fidelity, Valkyrie, BlackRock, Grayscale, Bitwise, Hashdex and Franklin Templeton were able to be listed on U.S. exchanges. Following approval, Gensler released a statement saying the commission “did not approve or endorse” Bitcoin, just the exchange-traded products.

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