Suddenly fell sharply! Bitcoin falls below $40,000 mark, US Securities and Exchange Commission speaks out

On Monday, Bitcoin continued its decline since the listing of its spot ETF, falling 5.5% during the day to $39,461, falling below the important $40,000 mark for the first time since December last year. As of press time, Bitcoin was temporarily trading at $39,861.6, down 4.26%.

Bitcoin's poor performance dragged down other digital currencies and related concept stocks.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved on January 10, and the first batch of spot Bitcoin ETFs began trading on January 11 the next day.

However, the listing is the peak, and Bitcoin has gone out of the typical "selling facts" trend. On January 11, Bitcoin once rose above $49,000, setting a new high since December 2021, with an intraday increase of approximately 6.8%. However, the enthusiasm soon subsided, and Bitcoin turned lower that day, returning to below $46,000. Based on the lowest intraday price of $39,500 on Monday, Bitcoin has made a cumulative correction of 20%, entering a technical bear market.

On January 22, local time, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) issued a statement stating that an unknown hacker took over the phone numbers of SEC employees earlier in January and published false posts on social media. This post announced in advance that the SEC has approved spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) to be listed and traded in the United States. An SEC employee’s cellphone was the target of a “SIM swap” attack conducted through the agency’s telecom carrier, allowing hackers to gain control of SEC X accounts.

"SEC staff has found no evidence that this unauthorized party gained access to SEC systems, data, equipment or other social media accounts," the SEC said in a statement. The U.S. Department of Justice, the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Division, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), and the SEC’s Inspector General and Enforcement Division all continue to investigate the matter, the agency said. The SEC also said that multi-factor authentication for its X account was disabled last July and was not re-enabled until after this incident. All SEC social media accounts that offer multi-factor authentication now have the feature enabled, the regulator said.

On January 9, local time, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced on its official account on social media , to ensure that their compliance measures continue to protect investors.

After the news was released, the price of Bitcoin briefly surged above $47,800, setting a new intraday high.

However, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler then urgently clarified on his personal account that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s social account had been stolen. The message was “unauthorized” and the SEC has not yet approved the listing and trading of spot Bitcoin ETFs.

At the same time, an SEC spokesperson stated that the SEC account had been compromised and that the unauthorized information about the Bitcoin ETF was not released by the SEC or its staff.

It is understood that about a dozen companies have applied to list Bitcoin ETFs in the United States, with BlackRock, Ark and several other potential Bitcoin ETF issuers submitting revised forms early on January 8. The SEC has until January 10 to respond to at least one of the filings, and crypto insiders speculate the regulator will use that date to announce a decision.