Whistleblower Edward Snowden sharply criticized Biden Administration official Gary Gensler, Chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), over a post on X related to Bitcoin, after the SEC's X account was hacked.
The hack led to false information being disseminated from official SEC accounts, misleading millions.
On Tuesday, the official SEC X (formerly Twitter) handle, @SECGov, erroneously announced the approval of Bitcoin Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), a post that garnered over 2.7 million views before being deleted. The misinformation spread rapidly, with high-profile financial X accounts echoing the fake news.
The elation was quickly deflated after Gensler's account confirmed the SEC's Twitter compromise, saying that no such ETFs were approved, drawing an audience of over 7.5 million views.
The @SECGov twitter account was compromised, and an unauthorized tweet was posted. The SEC has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products.
— Gary Gensler (@GaryGensler) January 9, 2024
Snowden's sharp rebuke, including tweets like "jesus christ gary get your s*** together" and "you had one job," coupled with a retweet mocking the SEC's previous advisories, sparked further discussion about the reliability of online information, especially from government sources.
jesus christ gary get your shit together https://t.co/RaLAQKm4er
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) January 9, 2024
Newsweek has reached out to the SEC via email for comment.
At 5:37 p.m. ET, Bloomberg's Ally Versprille posted on X, "NEW from SEC spokesperson re: hack: 'The SEC will work with law enforcement and our partners across government to investigate the matter and determine appropriate next steps relating to both the unauthorized access and any related misconduct.'"
Versprille posted another tweet from the SEC spokesperson, who noted that the "SEC has determined that there was unauthorized access to and activity on the @SECGov account by an unknown party for a brief period of time shortly after 4 pm ET," adding that "unauthorized access has been terminated."
Update 1/09/23, 7:26 p.m. ET: This story has been updated with comments made by Bloomberg's Ally Versprille.
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