The Securities and Exchange Commission’s official X account was hacked when the agency posted late on 9 January that it had approved exchange traded funds holding bitcoin, forcing chair Gary Gensler and the regulator to disavow the erroneous post.

Bitcoin briefly jumped to near $48,000 before Gensler said on the social-media network that the message was “unauthorised” and that the SEC “has not approved the listing and trading of spot bitcoin exchange-traded products”. The agency later posted that its account was “compromised”.