The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has officially approved the United States' first regulated spot Bitcoin (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) - just one day after a false message posted from the SEC's official Twitter account caused chaos in the markets. Again, it is not 100% official; the approval was briefly posted on the SEC's website. The URL now gives a 404 error.

Can pretty much guarantee that the SEC did not intend for anyone outside the SEC to get their hands on this document/link yet

I can confirm that I downloaded the document from the https://t.co/91ig9KfHmX website. And its an approval order. Assume the SEC will repost shortly.
— James Seyffart (@JSeyff) January 10, 2024

On Jan. 10, the securities regulator approved the 19b-4 applications from ARK 21Shares, Invesco Galaxy, VanEck, WisdomTree, Fidelity, Valkyrie, BlackRock, Grayscale, Bitwise, Hashdex and Franklin Templeton - approving the rule changes that allow a spot Bitcoin ETF to be listed and traded on the respective exchanges. The file was downloadable from the SEC website for several minutes before an "Error 404" message appeared.

The historic approval paves the way for the first regulated exchange-traded product in the U.S. to offer investors direct exposure to the price of Bitcoin without having to buy it or worry about self-custody. Investors will buy shares in ETFs that hold Bitcoin as an underlying asset.

At the time of publication, it was unclear whether the "Error 404" that showed the SEC had approved 11 spot Bitcoin ETF applications was the result of the commission withdrawing the document or an overload of website traffic. ETF analyst James Seyffart posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the commission may not have intended to release the approval document at that time, but would likely repost it anyway."