- Bitcoin briefly popped 10% on Monday after a false report said the SEC approved a spot bitcoin ETF from BlackRock.
- BlackRock told Bloomberg that its ETF is, in fact, still under review by the SEC.
- Crypto investors have been holding out hope for a spot bitcoin ETF for years, to no avail.
The price of bitcoin briefly spiked as much as 10% on Monday after a false report said that the Securities and Exchange Commission had approved the first spot bitcoin ETF from BlackRock.
In a now deleted tweet, crypto-focused news outlet CoinTelegraph had reported on Twitter “BREAKING: SEC APPROVES ISHARES BITCOIN SPOT ETF.”
BlackRock owns and operates the iShares ETF brand.
The price of bitcoin immediately surged as much as 10% to a high of $29,900. But those gains quickly vanished after a spokesperson for BlackRock told Bloomberg that its spot bitcoin ETF application was still under review by the SEC.
CoinTelegraph followed up with a tweet, saying: “We apologize for a tweet that led to the dissemination of inaccurate information regarding the Blackrock Bitcoin ETF. An internal investigation is currently underway.”
Bitcoin pared its gains and is now up about 3%, hovering slightly above the $28,000 level.
The volatility spike in bitcoin on Monday highlights the hope investors have been holding onto for the SEC to approve a spot bitcoin ETF.
While the agency has approved bitcoin futures ETFs, it has repeatedly denied and delayed bitcoin spot ETF applications over the past few years, but hope has been renewed after massive asset management firms like BlackRock and Fidelity threw their hat into the ring with their own bitcoin ETF applications.
Hope for a bitcoin spot ETF also surged after Grayscale Investments won a court appeal, which said that the SEC’s decision to reject an application from Grayscale to convert its bitcoin trust fund into a spot bitcoin ETF was wrong.
A recent Reuters report said that the SEC would not appeal that decision, lending some hope to investors that a spot bitcoin ETF could be imminent, including Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood.
“I do think the SEC is moving now… some of the research that we believe is percolating up to [regulatory] commissioners might be getting through to them and might be the grounds now for the approval of a bitcoin ETF. And we don’t think that the SEC will approve just one. They will probably approve a group of them,” Wood said in a recent interview.
There are currently more than 10 spot bitcoin ETF applications under review by the SEC.
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