Key Takeaways
- Bitcoin price jumped 5%, inching closer to $30,000 on an erroneous news report
- A news outlet reported and later retracted a social media post about SEC approving Blackrock’s spot Bitcoin ETF.
- While Bitcoin pared back some of the earlier gains, it was still up firmly after the clarification.
- Approval of a spot bitcoin ETF long has been viewed as a pivotal moment in the crypto asset’s acceptance among mainstream investors.
Bitcoin’s price briefly rose more than 5% to nearly $30,000 early Monday after an erroneous report that investment firm giant BlackRock’s bitcoin spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) had received approval from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
The now retracted story published by Cointelegraph on social media platform X (formerly Twitter), was was denied by Blackrock to other news outlets. While bitcoin started Monday in the U.S. at around $27,750, it had settled back to just above $28,000 by about 2:24 p.m. ET.
The potential approval of a spot bitcoin ETF has been watched closely by crypto market participants for years, as it is seen as a key stepping stone for mainstream financial acceptance and could enable more activity in the market from institutional investors. A number of futures-based bitcoin ETFs already exist in the U.S.
In light of the bitcoin price spike after the erroneous report Monday, some investors now believe that the eventual approval of a spot bitcoin ETF in the U.S. isn’t entirely priced into the bitcoin market. “We can safely conclude the following … Bitcoin ETFs were not and are not priced in,” Altana Digital Currency Fund Chief Investment Officer (CIO) Alistair Milne posted on X Monday.
According to Bloomberg analysts, there is a 90% chance that a spot bitcoin ETF gets approved by January.
