Late Thursday evening, the official website of the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) experienced an outage, remaining offline for several hours. Reports of the outage surfaced on X (formerly Twitter) as early as 10:24 pm New York time, with the site still inaccessible hours later.
SEC Website Outage Sparks Bitcoin Plunge: A $80 Billion Market Cap Wipeout in Two Hours
Prior to the SEC website outage, Bitcoin was trading around $71,200. However, during the downtime, Bitcoin's price plummeted below $66,800 on Bitstamp, marking a 6.5% decline and wiping out over $80 billion in market capitalization within just two hours.
The SEC's Role in Bitcoin's Price Plunge: Examining Influence and Uncertainties
While the timing of the website outage and Bitcoin's price crash is noteworthy, the exact causes of the dramatic decline remain uncertain. The SEC holds considerable influence as the world’s most powerful securities regulator, overseeing trillions of dollars in publicly traded securities and asserting jurisdiction over numerous assets in the crypto industry.
SEC Website Outage Amidst Cryptocurrency Turmoil: Lack of Official Commentary Raises Concerns
Although not commonplace, US government websites have experienced outages in the past. Justice.gov, WhiteHouse.gov, HealthCare.gov, USA.gov, and NASA.gov are among those that have faced lengthy downtime episodes.
As of 1 am New York time, the SEC website remained offline, with no official comments from the SEC, Gary Gensler, or Hester Peirce regarding the outage on X. It's worth noting that three SEC Commissioners do not have X accounts: Mark Uyeda, Jaime Lizárraga, and Caroline Crenshaw.