Cointelegraph explained the reason for publishing a fake news story about bitcoin-ETF approval

Cointelegraph explained the story with the fake publication about the approval of bitcoin-ETF

An employee of the publication did not check the information received and published a message, the source of which could not be found afterward

Cointelegraph explained that the fake news about the approval of the spot bitcoin-ETF from BlackRock was published by an employee who found it on social network X (formerly Twitter). The news was unconfirmed and came purportedly from a Bloomberg terminal.

On October 16, Cointelegraph's social media team posted on social network X without prior editorial approval that the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) had approved BlackRock's iShares spot exchange-traded bitcoin fund iShares.

The post was based on an unconfirmed screenshot posted by user X, who claimed it was a screenshot from a Bloomberg terminal, the publication explained. An internal investigation revealed that the standard procedure for publishing breaking news on social media, which requires sources to be verified first, had not been followed.

After readers reported the issue to Cointelegraph, the publication's staff discovered that the source of the news could no longer be found. The explanation states that they then contacted BlackRock and Bloomberg before deleting the post.

To ensure that something like this doesn't happen again, the Cointelegraph team is now scrutinizing and reviewing its social media management processes, especially in terms of authenticating breaking news before publishing a post.

For its part, the SEC commented on the fake news situation. The regulator noted that "the best source of information about the SEC is the SEC."

The publication of the news about the approval of the spot bitcoin-ETF caused a sharp rise in the rates of cryptocurrencies, and the refutation entailed an equally sharp fall. Against the backdrop of these jumps, traders on crypto exchanges lost more than $150 million in a day.