The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Twitter (X) account was compromised by an unidentified individual, the Safety Team of the social media platform confirmed after conducting a preliminary investigation. Earlier, the crypto ecosystem went into disarray after the Bitcoin ETF announcement came from the SEC X Account was later claimed to be an unauthorized post.
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US SEC X Account Hacked
In an unexpected turn of events ahead of the expected approval of the spot Bitcoin ETF, a tweet from the SEC X handle said the ETFs were approved. This led to a sudden jump in the Bitcoin (BTC) Price, only to get dumped with Chair Gary Gensler’s claim that the account was compromised and the post was in fact an unauthorized one. This had also led to speculation that the SEC Chair was blaming the entire episode on hacking and was a result of a premature communication by an employee at the Commission.
More importantly, the X platform confirmed that at the time the account was compromised, the SEC account did not have two-factor authentication enabled. The Safety Team of X platform released an official statement about the incident:
“We can confirm that the account SEC was compromised and we have completed a preliminary investigation. Based on our investigation, the compromise was not due to any breach of X’s systems.”
The hacking was due to an unidentified individual obtaining control over a phone number associated with the SEC account through a third party, the Safety Team explained. The agency said in a statement that it would collaborate with law enforcement agencies to investigate the hack.
Demand For Probe
The hacking of the SEC X account led to widespread criticism, as unauthorized communications could lead to unfair and manipulative practices. In this case, the pumping and dumping of Bitcoin led to millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin changing hands, at the cost of huge volatility in BTC Price. A demand for a probe on the incident is coming from several quarters, including US Congressmen.
US Senator Bill Hagerty said the SEC will need to maintain the same level of accountability that it would expect from any public company, when it comes to misinformation and market manipulation. While the US SEC itself is responsible for maintaining accountability among various stakeholders, this market moving incident, especially around the all-important approval of Bitcoin ETF, raises questions around the standards of the current SEC administration, which has been highly critical of the crypto space.
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