The price of Bitcoin soared by more than 15% within minutes of the release of a fake tweet from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which claimed that the US agency had approved spot Bitcoin ETFs.
At one point, the price of Bitcoin jumped to about $48,000, but less than half an hour later fell to a level below $45,000.
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The release of the SEC's retraction triggered a cascading liquidation of traders' long positions amounting to more than $900 million over the next 24 hours. On the afternoon of Wednesday, January 10, the market capitalization of Bitcoin fluctuates at the level of $887 billion. The market price revolves around the levels of $45,370-$45,600 per BTC.
Read: SEC X-account hacked to publish fake approval of Bitcoin ETF
Over the last 24 hours, Bitcoin has lost about 2 .5% of its market value. However, on the weekly timeframe, the asset’s growth remains within 4%.
The incident caused criticism among digital asset market participants regarding the SEC, which positions itself as a protector of investors from digital fraudsters, but itself cannot set up two-factor identification of its Twitter account.
The SEC refused to say whether an investigation into the compromise of the account has begun and whether the incident will affect the timing of approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs.