Follow Slashdot blog updates by subscribing to our blog RSS feed

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Bitcoin Government United States

SEC Claims Account Was 'Compromised' After Announcing False Bitcoin ETF Approval (cnbc.com) 48

With the approval of new rule change applications, the SEC is now allowing bitcoin ETFs to be traded in the United States.



UPDATE: The SEC said that the announcement about bitcoin ETFs on social media was incorrect, and that its X account was compromised. "The SEC's @SECGov X/Twitter account has been compromised. The unauthorized tweet regarding bitcoin ETFs was not made by the SEC or its staff," an SEC spokesperson told CNBC.

"The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products," said SEC Chair Gary Gensler in a post on X. From the original CNBC article: The decision will likely lead to the conversion of the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, which holds about $29 billion of the cryptocurrency, into an ETF, as well as the launch of competing funds from mainstream issuers like BlackRock's iShares. The approval could prove to be a landmark event in the adoption of cryptocurrency by mainstream finance, as the ETF structure gives institutions and financial advisors a familiar and regulated way to buy exposure to bitcoin.

The SEC has for years opposed a so-called spot bitcoin fund, with several firms filing and then withdrawing applications for ETFs in the past. SEC Chair Gary Gensler has been an outspoken critic of crypto during his tenure. However, the regulator appeared to change course on the ETF question in 2023, possibly due in part to an August loss to Grayscale in court which criticized the SEC for blocking bitcoin ETFs while allowing funds that track bitcoin futures.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

SEC Claims Account Was 'Compromised' After Announcing False Bitcoin ETF Approval

Comments Filter:
  • by nocoiner ( 7891194 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @04:53PM (#64145281)

    Scam follows scam. Who could've expected?

  • Just say no to crypto.

    • it is just gambling tokens but if one liked to gamble and had extra money sitting around probably would do okay buying after a dump and sell during a pump as long as that cycle keeps happening.

      if not, well you were just gambling and you lost extra money, it's entertainment like all gambling...

      • Re:As Always (Score:4, Insightful)

        by ctilsie242 ( 4841247 ) on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @10:48PM (#64145911)

        Even gambling is regulated. I don't see people running around telling people to go buy all of Caeser's Palace poker chips, or making their own poker chips, having people buy them for gaming, then shut everything down and run off with that cash.

        As for transactions, can the BTC network replace Swift, as people brag about?

        • plenty of people play poker with friends and relatives in living room or have an office football pool, even if in place where technically illegal.

          Some gambling is regulated but some isn't. Think of current bitcoin as unregulated gambling. I agree it should be regulated if it's ever going to be anything more than a gambling token...

    • and say yes to fiat that keeps losing values and destroy savings?
      no thanks
      • by Bahbus ( 1180627 )

        Everything related to crypto is a waste of time, effort, and money. If you successfully made money off crypto, congrats, you scammed someone else and are, therefore, a terrible person.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 09, 2024 @04:56PM (#64145289)

    The plan for all cryptocurrencies isn't what they want to make you think it is. It's more sinister than the egalitarian image the crypto boys portray for it.

    After the 2008 financial meltdown, cryptocurrencies were born out of it, declared to be the means by which people could be freed from banks/governments, and promised to avoid any such future meltdowns from happening ever again.

    But the crypto boys watched closely the result of that meltdown, and formulated their plan: create a new form of currency, and for it a new financial system detached from traditional ones (those burdened by "governments and regulations") - they called it "DeFi" for "Decentralized Finance", but its dirty little secret is that it's really "Deregulated Finance".

    Their plan is to make this new money be adopted by the masses, so they start it off with a low price, then gradually increase it, by virtue of them just pulling numbers out of thin air for its value, until it catches the attention of the masses - then it gets more and more "valuable" from the collective faith of its given value ("network effect"), until traditional institutions and the typical "1%" billionaires start to notice and, greedy as they are, want in on the action too.

    So now those that got in at the ground floor have gained all this "value" out of thin air, and once they're ready, they'll pull out all pretty much at once - that it'll create a sell-off panic, and a new meltdown is born! And because of their "De[regulated]Fi" system, the bros have already shifted all the risks away from themselves onto others, so they'll make out like bandits, leaving everyone else to "hodl" the bag.

    But the bros were really observant about that last meltdown - and noticed all the "bailouts" the big banks got - so as they were shifting the risks to others, they increased their investments into what would get the next bailouts - so in the end they'll make out like bandits twice: the first time from suckering everyone else into their pump-and-dump scam, and again once they benefit from the bailouts that'll get handed out.

    And there you have it folks, the real master plan of crypto.

    --
    "Those who fail to accept it will mod the truth down to -1." -Prof. Feynman

    • I know this is a frequently mentioned post, but I'll bite. I'm still surprised that the BTC exchanges were not able to get banks to buy in and interweave BTC into the financial institutions so well that when it collapsed, it would have meant a TARP-2 to cover FTX's bankruptcy.

      I do wonder what the future of cryptocurrency is these days. I'm surprised BTC still has value, but apparently someone values it, which I have no clue why.

      • They got some of that - search 'tether audit' from several years ago.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by Darinbob ( 1142669 )

        It has value for the purposes of hiding transactions. That's the biggest use. Scams, tax evasion, money laundering, trades in illegal goods, and so forth. Having exchanges eliminates that use because the buyer and seller of the transactions are known, and further having official oversight like banks cuts out a lot of the illegal uses that drive its value. What's sort of left is international money transfers to nations where crime is allowed as long is targets other countries.

        The reason there have been b

        • by DrMrLordX ( 559371 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2024 @12:23AM (#64145995)

          Bitcoin transactions are easily traceable.

        • by TwistedGreen ( 80055 ) on Wednesday January 10, 2024 @02:53AM (#64146123)

          Not really. The blockchain makes that ledger public and verifiable, but it doesn't provide any real anonymity. Anyone can see the transactions and trace them from wallet to wallet. Bitcoin's purpose was really to remove reliance on a single institution that could fail, thus decentralized finance. It has nothing to do with regulation or government, except that it doesn't really need them to function, but could easily tolerate them. The fact that it's being used for money laundering, speculation, and risk taking is just an unfortunate side effect of human nature.

          • Anonymous since there's no verification of your name and address. Original block chain didn't require any official verification of ID, I presume most people just used aliases. In an exchange there might be more registration involved, but are they really checking official IDs? There's a lot of time and expense to track them blockchains down, and often the victims never hold the bitcoin directly, but deposit money into bitcoin ATMs. Local police really have nothing to go on.

            The real snag though is that many

  • Everyone knows that everything on Twitter, or X for the challenged, is official.

    That we would even allow the failing site to be used at all by such agencies shows just how mentally challenged we are.

  • Back in the Noughties, I was mining Bitcoin with an Nvidia card. It was all very innocent. I did it at night when demand was low (nuclear-provided). I actually mined enough for >3 Btc. I sold them for around $25.

    Around a year ago, I noticed crypto had got more sinister. Or rather, crypto was just the hook that con men used.

    I'm still thinking of putting 2% of my portfolio into crypto but:
    a) Anyone who tries to ensnare me in response is scum.
    b) If you put more than 5% in, you're playing with fire.

  • "HACKED", you say? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Thud457 ( 234763 )
    I can think of somebody [wikipedia.org] that is pro -bitcoin and anti -SEC.

    Yeah, you're right, it's probably nothing.
  • What is this social media platform known as "X"? I only acknowledge the formerly known as Twitter moniker.

    • They intend to make it impossible to easily search for their content with a search engine for some reason.

      As long as one redirects to the other I'll use the canonical URL.

  • 1). The SEC probably shouldn't have a Twitter/X account. At all.
    2). If they'd stop dragging their feet and either approve or deny the ETF requests in question, this nonsense wouldn't be possible.

  • They did not have 2FA enabled. Someone used the phone attached to the account to hack/gain access.IE - epic fail by the SEC

It is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. - W. K. Clifford, British philosopher, circa 1876

Working...