SEC website taken offline, precedes bitcoin price crash

The official government website for the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) went offline late Thursday evening. Reports of the outage reached X (formerly Twitter) as early as 10:24 pm New York time. The site remained offline hours later.

Prior to the website outage, bitcoin was trading around $71,200. While the website was offline, bitcoin crashed below $66,800 on Bitstamp. That 6.5% decline wiped out over $80 billion in market capitalization within two hours.

To be clear, although the price crash correlated curiously with the SEC website outage, the exact causes of bitcoin’s dramatic decline are indeterminate.

The SEC is the world’s most powerful securities regulator with jurisdiction over trillions of dollars in publicly traded securities. Its commissioners have Congressionally authorized oversight over quadrillions of dollars worth of securities transactions annually and its website provides official statements and filings relating to corporate disclosures, enforcement actions, educational information, and ongoing lawsuits.

The SEC has also asserted jurisdiction over many assets in the crypto industry, designating many tokens as unregistered securities.

The SEC’s X account remained online during the website outage. The account did not acknowledge the outage for at least two hours following the outage.

Although not commonplace, there are historical examples of US government website outages. Indeed, Justice.gov, WhiteHouse.gov, HealthCare.gov, USA.gov, and NASA.gov have experienced lengthy outages in the past.

As of 1 am New York time, the website was still offline and neither the SEC, Gary Gensler, or Hester Peirce had commented about the website outage on X. (Three SEC Commissioners do not have X accounts: Mark Uyeda, Jaime Lizárraga, and Caroline Crenshaw.)

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