Gensler caricature

The SEC twitter account being hacked on the eve of the expected ETF announcement is a massive blackeye for the organization that's supposed to be in charge of investor protection.

SEC best source of information
Oooof

The risk is that this disaster delays the actual ETF approval. I can't imagine it would derail it altogether if it was already planned but no matter what happens, this isn't a good look.

My hope is that this was a scheduled tweet that was sent out a day early, which would be (I suppose) less of an embarrassment than getting outright hacked. However the hacker also appears to have 'liked' a couple random tweets before his access was cut off.

Tweets the SEC account 'liked'
Tweets the SEC account 'liked'

But the tweet itself just reads some much more legit than anything a hacker could have written. And think, if you wanted to make money, the move would have been to write that the ETFs were rejected, which would have really hurt BTC.

gensler

Even Gensler's tweet kinda hints it was something in the drafts.

sec Bitcoin not approved 10 January 2024

Perhaps with certain government accounts there are ways to tweet drafts or scheduled tweets and to like without the ability to actually compose? That makes me wonder if the issue wasn't at the SEC level but the twitter (or X.com) level.

The last big hack was the July 2020 twitter account hijacking and it was far more ham-handed.

Apple fake tweet

The hackers redirected those to a crypto scam but it all fell apart and they were arrested two weeks later and spent five years in prison.

gensler 2FA