Republican lawmakers want answers from the Securities and Exchange Commission after the agency's X account was hacked Jan. 9, erroneously stating that it had approved bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
SEC Chair Gary Gensler quickly posted on his personal X, formerly Twitter, account, alerting the public that the SEC's page had been compromised and that the agency "has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products."
Now, lawmakers on Capitol Hill want answers.
Rep. Ann Wagner, R-Mo., chair of the House Financial Services Capital Markets Subcommittee, said in an X post that she was deeply concerned with the alleged hack. "This is clear market manipulation that impacted millions of investors," Wagner said. "I plan to get more answers from Chair Gensler on this incident."
The price of bitcoin rose to nearly $48,000 on Jan. 9, but then dropped to just north of $45,000 after the SEC announced the hack. Market participants have been anticipating the SEC approval of spot bitcoin ETFs this week.
"Just like the SEC would demand accountability from a public company if they made such a colossal market-moving mistake, Congress needs answers on what just happened," said Sen. Bill Hagerty, R-Tenn., who has criticized the SEC in the past for its "regulating by enforcement" approach to cryptocurrencies. "This is unacceptable."
A fellow crypto proponent, Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., said in an X post that "fraudulent announcements, like the one that was made on the SEC's social media, can manipulate markets. We need transparency on what happened."
Roughly six hours after the hack was announced, the X Safety account posted that based on its preliminary investigation, the hack "was not due to any breach of X's systems, but rather due to an unidentified individual obtaining control over a phone number associated with the @SECGov account through a third party. We can also confirm that the account did not have two-factor authentication enabled at the time the account was compromised. We encourage all users to enable this extra layer of security."
An SEC spokesperson did not immediately respond to questions about the hack.