According to CoinDesk, a Bitcoin user has embedded the message 'SEC Chairman on the brink of second ETF approval' in the world's largest blockchain, amid growing speculation over the approval of bitcoin spot exchange-traded funds (ETF) in the U.S. The message was encoded using Bitcoin's OP_RETURN function, which allows for data up to 80 bytes and makes a transaction unspendable. The fee paid for the transaction was $2.97, as reported by mempool.space, a website that tracks activity on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has been at the center of intense speculation due to its longstanding opposition to a spot Bitcoin ETF and a recent hack of its official Twitter account that led to a fake approval announcement. The wording of the embedded message in the Bitcoin transaction is reminiscent of the message in the blockchain's original 'Genesis' block in 2009, which was a headline from British newspaper The Times that read: 'Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.'
