Bitcoin jumped more than 5% on Monday. Illustration by Fortune
Bitcoin soared but then pared back gains following a now-debunked rumor that the first amid a flurry of applications for a spot Bitcoin ETF had been approved by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The cryptocurrency jumped 5.6%, to as high as $29,483, following the rumor published Monday morning, according to CoinGecko. It stopped just short of the $30,000 level, which Bitcoin hasn’t reached since August, but was still up about 4.9%, at $28,200, just before noon.
The rumor, spurred by a now-deleted post on X by CoinTelegraph, claimed that the SEC had approved BlackRock’s iShares spot Bitcoin ETF, which the asset manager filed in June. BlackRock’s filing led to a wave of copycats, including WisdomTree, Invesco, and Fidelity, which all submitted or updated existing spot Bitcoin ETF filings. The new rush of filings was widely seen as a boon for the crypto space that could lead to an increase in investor funds in the sector.
While some analysts have said odds are that the first spot Bitcoin ETF could be approved by the end of the year, the SEC has made no such promises. The agency lost a case earlier this year against Grayscale in which the court found that its refusal to grant Grayscale a Bitcoin ETF was without basis. A spot Bitcoin ETF has yet to be approved in the U.S.
Bloomberg reported on Friday that the SEC would not appeal the Grayscale decision, which makes it more likely, although not guaranteed, that a spot Bitcoin ETF could be approved sooner rather than later.
CoinTelegraph said in an updated X post on Monday that it was investigating what led to the incorrect tweet about BlackRock’s spot Bitcoin ETF.
