This Week on Crypto Twitter: Fake ETF News Pumps Bitcoin

By Tim Hakki

Bitcoin holders profited this week amidst a flurry of industry announcements—both real and apocryphal—about the industry’s elusive hunt to get a spot Bitcoin ETF greenlit by the SEC. 

Bitcoin’s price received an intraday boost of 10% on Monday, after crypto publication Cointelegraph falsely tweeted that TradFi asset management titan BlackRock had been approved to launch a U.S. Bitcoin spot ETF. Several journalists, including Fox’s Eleanor Terrett and Bloomberg’s James Seyffart dispelled the rumors.

Cointelegraph later owned up to the mistake in a tweeted announcement:

Several crypto fans imagined the reactions of SEC Chair Gary Gensler to the whole debacle. Gensler is an avowed crypto skeptic whose “regulation by enforcement” style has been widely called out by the industry, as well as sympathetic lawmakers in Washington. 

In other news, the ongoing trial of disgraced FTX co-founder and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried continued apace. Crypto analyst Adam Cochran called out SBF’s legal team for what he saw as its delaying tactics and prevarication. 

Chinese blockchain journalist Colin Wu that day flagged up some worrying money flows at British exchange Bitrace. 

Tech journalist Joseph Cox of 404 Media promoted his new exposé about ACG, a group of con artists and hackers that the FBI blames for a spate of SIM-swapping attacks. The technique sees scammers persuade mobile network companies to reassign the victim’s phone number to a SIM card held by the scammer, in order to gain access to their accounts. Looks like crime does pay, sometimes. 

Peter Johnson, the co-head of venture at Brevan Howard Digital, a crypto-focused arm of alternative investment firm Brevan Howard, shared 10 key takeaways from the company’s new stablecoin report. 

Crypto Twitter’s favorite pseudonymous blockchain sleuth, ZachXBT, revealed a potential new gig on Thursday as he was nominated as a candidate for Polygon’s new protocol council.

Finally, the LBRY Protocol bid followers a final farewell that day. LBRY was a file-sharing project that received a verdict from a federal court back in July that it was liable for violating U.S. securities laws. The ruling states the protocol “is permanently restrained and enjoined from participating, directly or indirectly, in any unregistered crypto asset securities offering.”

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