Bitcoin experienced a brief surge to $30,000 on Monday, influenced by false reports regarding the SEC's approval of BlackRock (NYSE:BLK)'s iShares spot Bitcoin ETF application. The misinformation, circulated by Cointelegraph on social media, led to liquidations worth around $100 million as investors sought to profit from the unexpected price spike.
The fake news was later refuted by BlackRock and Fox Business reporter Eleanor Terret. BlackRock, a $9 trillion asset manager, clarified that their application is still under SEC review, a fact supported by the U.S. SEC's official website. The market's reaction was also influenced by a court decision favoring Grayscale's GBTC to spot ETF conversion and anticipation for the GBTC to spot ETF countdown, beneficial for traditional investors.
In response to the incident, Cointelegraph issued an apology for spreading the misinformation and initiated an internal investigation. The impact of this misinformation on market liquidations was evident in the Coinglass data, which showed $105 million positions, including $73 million in shorts and $32 million in longs, were liquidated within an hour.
By late morning on Monday, Bitcoin corrected to $28,192.22 with a 24-hour trading volume up by 366.20% at $24.39 billion, representing a 4.90% spike over the past 24 hours and a 2.6% gain in the last seven days. According to CoinMarketCap data, Bitcoin's total circulating supply is 19.52 million tokens with a market cap of $550.69 billion.
Fidelity's Bitcoin ETF proposal is another under consideration by the SEC as the market continues to respond to developments in cryptocurrency regulation and acceptance among traditional investors.
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