Bitcoin is on the way back up today as renewed ETF excitement fills the cryptosphere: various brokerages and exchanges are apparently beginning to list ETFs in anticipation of the SEC’s approval.

By midday on Wednesday, investors started sharing screenshots of their brokerage accounts on eTrade and Fidelity showing that the tickers for several Bitcoin ETFs had already been added.

To be clear: It’s not a sign that anything has yet been approved. But it’s telling that the brokerages feel confident enough that an approval is imminent to start listing the ETFs.

At the time of writing, Bitcoin is trading at roughly $46,300, according to CoinGecko. That means BTC is already where it was yesterday—and then some—before a false alarm rattled markets.

This follows a wild few hours of trading on Tuesday evening Eastern Time when Bitcoin traders appeared to sell the news—even if yesterday’s SEC announcement about Bitcoin ETF approvals was fake.

Bitcoin briefly skyrocketed above $48,000 within 5 minutes of a false announcement saying that all Bitcoin ETF applications had been approved. Very soon after—but before there was any official warning that the SEC’s Twitter account had been compromised—the price dropped.

SEC Twitter Account Hacked, Sends False 'Bitcoin ETFs Approved' Tweet

The official U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Twitter account was apparently "compromised" Tuesday when it tweeted that the long awaited Bitcoin ETF had been approved. The tweet caused the price of BTC to briefly spike, before settling back down. For a brief moment, Bitcoin shot as high as $47,680.10 before retracing those gains. But it didn't stop there. It's since plunged further to $45,627.92, according to CoinGecko. The @SECGov twitter account was compromised, and an unauthorized twe...

The sudden dip and the fact it occurred before word got out that the tweet was fake confirms that investors were “selling the news,” or trying to take advantage of a very bullish development, Finequia Research Analyst Matteo Greco told Decrypt.

“This pattern is typical in the market, where participants buy in the days leading up to a news event and then sell when the news becomes officially public,” he said.

But traders can’t sell what they don’t have. And there’s plenty of evidence that investors have been in accumulation mode for months. One side effect: Bitcoin dominance surged last year, meaning that the price of Bitcoin increased relative to Ethereum and altcoins.

“Bitcoin dominance rose in 2023 with a flight to quality and as the market grew increasingly bullish about the approval prospects for spot bitcoin ETFs,” wrote the on-chain intelligence firm in a report on Monday. “Some market participants also view the April 2024 BTC halving as a potentially positive price catalyst.” The halving refers to an event that occurs on the Bitcoin blockchain roughly every four years—mining rewards are cut in half, decreasing the amount of new coins entering the market.

And as many analysts have pointed out, a Bitcoin halving has always preceded a bull run.

Before the first halving of 2012, BTC was priced at $12.35; one year later the price of the coin stood at $964. The next halving on July 9, 2016, BTC was trading hands for $663. Again, one year later, it had shot up in value and was priced at $2,500.

 Bitcoin ETF

Bearish Bitcoin ETF Report Spooks Market—But Analysts Say Denial Is Unlikely

Bitcoin plunged by 7% Wednesday morning in the U.S., sinking as low as $41,804.95 before recovering slightly. At the time of writing, BTC is trading for $43,287.67, according to CoinGecko. The impetus appears to be a report from digital asset manager Matrixport with an ominous title: “Why the SEC will REJECT Bitcoin Spot ETFs again.” The report, written by Matrixport Head of Research Markus Thielen, also appeared on the 10x Research blog under a much more tepid headline. 🚀 The Potential Ramifi...

And at the latest halving, which took place on May 11, 2020, BTC was valued at $8,500. A bull run followed the next year and the biggest digital coin exploded to an all-time high the next year.

All the panic late yesterday sent trading volumes up to $40 billion in a 24-hour period. Volumes haven’t been that high since last week, when a bearish market report predicted that the SEC would reject all pending Bitcoin ETF applications.

Bitcoin ETF May Actually Boost BTC Price as Analysts Flip on 'Sell the News' Fears

For the last few weeks, conventional wisdom has forecasted that the highly anticipated, likely imminent approval of a spot Bitcoin ETF in the United States would be a “sell the news” event—or one that, despite its apparently positive impact on Bitcoin, would likely cause the cryptocurrency’s price to fall in the immediate term as traders exited their BTC positions at the crest of ETF hype.  Now, conventional wisdom is changing its tune.  On Tuesday, K33 Research revised its outlook on the matter...

As of yesterday afternoon, even formerly skeptical K33 Research, a crypto brokerage, reversed its expectation that traders would sell the news when (and if) a Bitcoin ETF approval gets announced.

“The liquidation cascade on January 3 drastically improved the state of the market,” K33 analysts Anders Helseth and Vetle Lunde wrote, referring to the bearish report from Matrixport that spooked traders. “Last week, we argued that traders would seek to realize profits following the announcement, with snowballing long liquidations adding gasoline to the fire, deepening the selloff."

“Following the deleveraging of last week," the report added, "the market is more robust to handle profit realization on the ETF announcement."

Edited by Guillermo Jimenez.