5
Golden Bitcoin Coin and mound of gold Marco Verch Professional/flickr.com

KEY POINTS

  • Bitcoin briefly traded at the $30,000 threshold Monday
  • The over $2,000 Bitcoin price surge was trigger by a flase report
  • As of 10:53 a.m. ET on Monday, the king of crypto was trading in the green zone at $28,192.22

Bitcoin surged from $27,900 to $30,000 following false reports that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved a spot Bitcoin ETF. The rumor, which made rounds on the social media platform X, resulted in hourly liquidations of around $100 million.

The X account of crypto outlet Cointelegraph tweeted Monday the SEC has approved the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) application of Blackrock (iShares). The false report, which garnered around 2.1 million views, was edited and then deleted shortly after 10 a.m. ET, just 39 minutes after it was posted.

The false report also triggered an over $2,000 price surge in the value of Bitcoin and liquidations of approximately $100 million, with holders determined to take profit from their positions.

"We apologize for a tweet that led to the dissemination of inaccurate information regarding the Blackrock Bitcoin ETF," Cointelegraph said in a new tweet. "An internal investigation is currently underway. We are committed to transparency and will share the findings of the investigation with the public once it is concluded within 3 hours."

BlackRock also confirmed the report was false, and said via its spokesperson that "BlackRock's iShares spot Bitcoin Application is still being reviewed by the SEC."

The official website of the U.S. SEC showed no approvals for a spot bitcoin ETF.

Data from the cryptocurrency futures market app Coinglass showed that $105 million in positions have been liquidated over the past hour, which includes $73 million in shorts and $32 million in longs.

The gain Bitcoin saw earlier has now been erased, and as of 10:53 a.m. ET Monday, the king of crypto was trading in the green zone at $28,192.22 with a 24-hour trading volume up by 366.20% at $24.39 billion -- representing a 4.90% spike over the past 24 hours and a 2.6% gain in the last seven days.

Latest data from CoinMarketCap shows Bitcoin's total circulating supply stands at 19.52 million tokens, with its value up by 3.24% at a $$550.69 billion market cap.

Read more
Bitcoin