A South African fugitive who ran an unregistered commodity pool to defraud unsuspecting victims of foreign exchange and bitcoin has been ordered to pay over $3 billion in restitution and civil monetary penalty. The judgment marks the largest monetary penalty ever recorded in a CFTC fraud case involving bitcoin. CFTC’s Biggest Bitcoin Fraudulent Case A...Read More
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed a civil enforcement action against Rashawn Russell, a former Deutsche Bank investment banker, in the US District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The filing alleges that Russell fraudulently solicited retail investors to invest in a digital asset trading fund. He is also being accused...Read More
America’s war on crypto has targeted Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange. In late March, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission unleashed a barrage of accusations against Binance and CEO Changpeng Zhao. Since then, the firm’s market share has plunged as much as 16%, according to recent research. On April 3, Kaiko research director Clara Medalie...Read More
The crypto analytics provider – Santiment – revealed that almost 90% of Ethereum’s supply is currently stored in self-custody addresses. The last time the figure was so high was in 2015, shortly after the protocol’s native token saw the light of day. The new data comes at a time when investors seem to have lost...Read More
Hundreds of millions of dollars in crypto was withdrawn from Binance shortly after the exchange was slapped with civil charges by US regulators on Monday, on-chain data shows. According to Nansen, the exchange has experienced $400 million in net outflows over the past 24 hours alone. By comparison, Binance has undergone over $2 billion in...Read More
A US Federal regulatory agency just filed a lawsuit against Binance – the world’s largest crypto exchange – for a sweeping range of regulatory violations, spooking Bitcoin back down to $27,000. Here’s what the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) believes the company and its CEO, Changepeng Zhao (CZ), are guilty of. Binance’s Violations According...Read More
Binance, one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, has been facing regulatory concerns from authorities around the world. The exchange has been accused of violating a number of regulatory requirements, including anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) rules. Recently, Binance has been sued by the US CFTC for alleged derivatives trading violations. Binance Faces Legal...Read More
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced the addition of key industry members to the newly constituted Technology Advisory Committee (TAC). The official press release stated that the agency has appointed White House official Carole House as the new chair, while blockchain analysis company TRM Labs’ Ari Redboard has been onboarded as the vice chair...Read More
Mango Markets’ exploiter Avraham Eisenberg was hit with a lawsuit by Mango Labs, the company behind the DeFi protocol, for $47 million in damages. The Wednesday filing with the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York alleges that Eisenberg executed a malicious attack on Mango Markets by manipulating the native token,...Read More
The non-profit organization – Stellar Development Foundation – announced joining a new advisory committee of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). According to the firm’s statement, SDF will be one of the four crypto-focused organizations at the Global Markets Advisory Committee (GMAC), which is one of the five active Advisory Committees overseen by...Read More
The Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has charged Mango Markets exploiter Avraham Eisenberg with violating federal commodities laws during his $110 million manipulation attack in October. The commission seeks various forms of penalties and relief from the attacker, some of which include trading bans, restitution, and disgorgement. Eisenberg’s Crime Per the complaint filed on...Read More
The Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) had alleged that Alameda Research was offered a secret “time advantage” when executing trades at the defunct crypto exchange FTX. The revelation adds to a growing list of claims and evidence suggesting that FTX and Alameda were not nearly as independent as once publicly portrayed. The Alameda Advantage...Read More
The American authorities ordered Jeremy Spence (a.k.a. “Coin Signals”) to pay over $2.8 million in restitution to victims of his cryptocurrency fraud. The US Department of Justice (DOJ) sentenced the criminal to 42 months in prison in May for running a scheme that defrauded investors with more than $5 million. ‘An Illustration of the CFTC’s...Read More
Rostin Benham – chairman of the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) – has walked back previous claims that Ether (ETH) and other altcoins should fall under his agency’s jurisdiction. Speaking about the future regulation of crypto following FTX’s bankruptcy, he suggested that only Bitcoin should be viewed as a commodity. Flipping Positions on Ether...Read More
United States financial regulators have reportedly launched a probe into FTX – one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges that is now unable to process customer withdrawals. The investigators intend to examine whether FTX properly managed customer deposits, alongside its relationship with CEO Sam Bankman-Fried’s other crypto projects. Probed by SEC and CFTC As reported...Read More
The power tussle between the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over regulatory oversight of the crypto market continues to confuse investors about which rules to follow. In line with the turf war conflict between the two market watchdogs, CFTC chairman Rostin Behnam has reiterated that Bitcoin...Read More
Celsius has been one of the more high-profile casualties of a sharp sell-off in the crypto market that was triggered in part by May’s collapse of the Terra blockchain. The now-bankrupt crypto lender’s legal headaches continue. In the latest development, the company is reportedly facing US federal investigations, a Tuesday filing from lawyers for its...Read More
In a new report, the Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC), a regulatory panel comprising leading financial regulators, identified areas in crypto regulation with: limited oversight of the spot market for tokens that are not securities; opportunities for regulatory arbitrage, or benefit favorable rules; if crypto firms should be allowed to integrate multiple services traditionally offered...Read More
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed an enforcement action lawsuit against Ooki DAO, a crypto margin trading and lending platform for engaging in digital asset margin trading that only CFTC-registered Futures Commission Merchants (FCM) can perform. Ooki DAO also failed to adhere to customer identification requirements prescribed under the Bank Secrecy Act, the...Read More
The pro-crypto regulatory framework proposed by U.S. Senators Cynthia Lummis and Kirsten Gillibrand is unlikely to see the light of day this year. Wyoming Senator Cynthia Lummis said on July 19 that the U.S. Senate is unlikely to vote on the bill this year. “It’s a big topic, it’s comprehensive, and it’s still new to...Read More
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a U.S. federal regulatory agency, charged a South African citizen and a global foreign currency commodity pool with alleged fraud and registration violations worth nearly $2 billion in BTC. Fraudulent Scheme Raked in $1.7 Billion in Bitcoin According to a press release on Thursday (June 30, 2022), the CFTC...Read More
US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler has sought a formal cooperation between financial agencies to regulate the crypto assets effectively. One Rulebook for Crypto Trade According to a news report in the Financial Times, Gensler said there should be one rule book so that bad actors don’t make use of regulatory gaps and...Read More
In an interview with Axios, Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero urged Congress to close the regulatory gap on cryptocurrencies. Responding to the recent plunge that has drained over $400 billion out of the crypto market within days, she said the unregulated sector shares similarities with some parts of the financial sector...Read More
According to CFTC Commissioner Summer Mersinger, U.S. policymakers are moving closer to putting the agency at the helm of crypto regulation. The designation would expand the CFTC’s mandate and pave the way for it to regulate digital assets such as cryptocurrencies and non-fungible tokens (NFTs). Mersinger made the comments this week at a Reuters Commodities...Read More
The co-founder and former CEO of the crypto derivatives platform BitMEX was sentenced to two years of probation, with the first six months to be spent in home confinement. In late 2020, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) accused the company’s co-founders – Arthur Hayes, Benjamin Delo, and Samuel Reed – of operating a digital...Read More
A few weeks after allowing the public to weigh in on the requests of FTX US Derivatives (formerly known as LedgerX) to amend its registration attempts to offer derivatives services, the CFTC has extended the deadline. CryptoPotato reported in late 2021 when FTX US – the American branch of the international crypto exchange – purchased...Read More
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) ordered Polymarket – a decentralized platform that allows users to bet on the outcome of current events – to pay a $1.4 million civil monetary penalty. The agency claimed that the company did not seek a Designated Contract Market (DCM) or Swap Execution Facility (SEF) registration. CFTC on the...Read More
Just before its direct listing, Coinbase has agreed to a 6,5 million-dollar fine after the CFTC found that the exchange engaged in illegal wash trading practices. The CFTC found that Coinbase could be engaged in trading practices that provided misleading information to services like Coinmarketcap and the CME Bitcoin Real Time Index. This happened via...Read More
The world’s leading crypto exchange, Binance, is purportedly being investigated by the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission for allowing residents to trade derivatives without the necessary registration. Although Binance CEO CZ called the development “FUD,” the crypto market reacted with a sudden price drop. Citing people familiar with the matter, Bloomberg reported the CFTC had...Read More
The restructuring within the BTC derivatives exchange BitMEX continues with the addition of Wai Kin Chim as an Independent Non-Executive Board Director of 100x Group. Additionally, the former Chief Credit Officer (CCO) at the Bank of China and the company’s recently appointed CEO will join the board of directors as of February 1st. Former Bank...Read More
