The fake announcement sent the price of Bitcoin down 2% within minutes.

The X account of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission was compromised on Tuesday afternoon and posted a fake tweet announcing that the agency had approved spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs), according to SEC Chair Gary Gensler. 

“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,” wrote Gensler. 

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.

— Gary Gensler (@GaryGensler) January 9, 2024

The fake announcement has caused some swings in BTC’s price. The unauthorized tweet was posted at 4:11 p.m. EST, when BTC was valued at $46,700. After briefly increasing to nearly $47,900, the cryptocurrency has since slid 2% to roughly $45,000 at the time of publication, data from TradingView shows.

The crypto community and investors have waited years for a spot Bitcoin ETF to be approved, and the decision was widely expected to come tomorrow, the final deadline for the SEC to make a decision on one of the applications.

This is not the first time an inaccurate tweet about spot Bitcoin ETFs has impacted BTC’s price. In October, a tweet from CoinTelegraph falsely claimed that BlackRock’s spot ETF application had been approved, causing BTC to surge 10%. Its price came back down, however, after BlackRock said the news was not true.

CORRECTION (Jan. 9 4:53 p.m. ET): An initial version of this story inaccurately stated that the SEC had approved spot Bitcoin ETFs. We deeply regret the error. 

UPDATE (Jan. 9 6:10 p.m. ET): Added information about CoinTelegraph’s false tweet in October.