United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero spoke at the Futures Industry Association Asia Derivatives Conference in Singapore on Nov. 30. She talked about “how to harness the best that technology offers, while protecting against emerging threats,” with particular emphasis on cybersecurity and crypto. Goldsmith Romero had two proposals for protecting consumers and markets from the risks presented by cryptocurrency. The first was rather novel. “Protecting household retail investors starts with redefining who is a retail investor,” Goldsmith Romero said. Crypto investors are different, she said: “Most are young-born after 1980, diverse, and make less than …

The United States Senate Agriculture Committee has announced that Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, chair Rostin Behnam will be one of the witnesses in a hearing exploring the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. According to the Senate Agriculture Committee website, on Dec. 1 the full committee will listen to testimony from Behnam and presumably other individuals with information about the liquidity issues and subsequent downfall of FTX. The hearing, titled ‘Why Congress Needs to Act: Lessons Learned from the FTX Collapse’ will be one of the first in which U.S. lawmakers explore what happened with the major crypto exchange …

United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner Summer Mersinger suggested that the time to act on cryptocurrency regulation may have arrived. Speaking at the Texas Blockchain Summit on Nov. 18, Mersinger considered what it may take for effective crypto regulation in the United States. “Lately it’s probably been 70-80% of what we talk about,” Mersinger said of crypto. “We are clearly in a situation where we need to stop, we need to gather the facts, we need to understand what’s happening […] to move policy ahead.” Mersinger saw forward movement in the process. “We are getting to the point …

FTX declared bankruptcy this month with $900 million in assets against $9 billion in liabilities. Its founder and former CEO, Sam Bankman-Fried, is being questioned by police in the Bahamas, and many customers are unable to withdraw their deposits. Its holdings of Serum’s SRM, a token Bankman-Fried developed, dropped from a value of more than $2 billion to less than $100 million. Things got worse over the weekend after FTX was apparently hacked, leading to the loss of an additional several hundred million. Some commentators are already calling it cryptocurrency’s “Lehman moment,” referring to the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers …

United States senators Debbie Stabenow and John Boozman have doubled down on their commitment to publishing a final version of the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act 2022 (DCCPA) in the wake of FTX’s shocking collapse. For a short time, the cryptocurrency community wasn’t sure how the senators would respond to the FTX crisis — as the DCCPA bill is understood to have been strongly supported by FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried. But the members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry confirmed their intentions in a Nov. 10 statement — stating “the events that have transpired this week …

Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) Christy Goldsmith Romero has pointed to the collapse of the Terra ecosystem and its flow-on effects as an example of how contagion risks within crypto markets are similar to those experienced by the traditional financial (TradFi) system during the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008. Romero suggested in a speech given at the International Swaps and Derivatives Association’s (ISDA) Crypto Forum on Oct. 26 that increased links between crypto markets and TradFi increases the risk posed by crypto to overall financial stability, noting: “The digital asset market remains relatively small and contained from the level …

The U.S. commodities regulator certainly doesn’t want to look like it's going easy on crypto, revealing it was behind 18 separate enforcement actions targeting digital assets in the 2022 fiscal year. In an Oct. 20 report from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a total of 82 enforcement actions were filed in 2022’s fiscal year, imposing $2.5 billion in “restitution, disgorgement and civil monetary penalties either through settlement or litigation.” The CFTC said that 20% of the enforcements were aimed at digital asset businesses, with chairman Rostin Behnam stating: “This FY 2022 enforcement report shows the CFTC continues to aggressively …

A new draft of the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA) bill has started to circulate online, with some commentary suggesting it could be positive for decentralized finance (DeFi) and crypto. A prior draft version of the bill drew heavy criticism from industry representative bodies for containing too broad a definition for a “digital commodity platform,” which “could be interpreted as a ban on decentralized finance (DeFi).” In a newly posted 31-page draft bill, shared by Delphi Labs general counsel Gabriel Shapiro, the lawyer said he made the draft bill publicly available as he believes in “transparency and open discussion.” …

The founder and CEO of cryptocurrency exchange FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried has backed the idea of knowledge tests and disclosures to protect retail investors but said it shouldn’t just be crypto-specific. Bankman-Fried tweeted his thoughts in response to an idea floated by the Commodities Future Trading Commission (CFTC) commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero on Oct. 15, saying the establishment of a “household retail investor” category for derivatives trading could give greater consumer protections. Romero said due to crypto, more retail investors are entering the derivatives markets and called for the CFTC to separate these investors from professional and high-net-worth individuals and have …

Considerable anxiety exists in the world of Web3 related to regulation and the legal status of cryptocurrency projects. It’s particularly apparent in the United States, where the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) fueled concerns in September with an announcement that it was imposing a $250,000 fine on a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), Ooki DAO, and its investors. The fine was particularly ominous, considering DAOs are intended to be “regulation proof.” The CFTC said in its statement on the issue that Ooki DAO’s bZeroX protocol offered illegal off-exchange trading of digital assets. The agency took issue with the fact that the …

The United States Commodities Futures Trading Commission can serve members of the Ooki decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO, with summons through online communications, according to a federal judge. In an Oct. 3 order granting a CFTC motion, U.S. district judge William Orrick said the commission could provide a copy of its summons and complaint through Ooki DAO’s help chat box as well as a notice on its online forum. The judge said the court’s decision was based on the CFTC effectively serving the Ooki DAO by providing the necessary documents. The CFTC filed a lawsuit against the Ooki DAO on …

Officials with the United States Financial Stability Oversight Council, or FSOC, have recommended U.S. lawmakers pass legislation to determine which “rulemaking authority” will be responsible for regulating parts of the crypto spot market. In an Oct. 3 meeting of the FSOC, Jonathan Rose, a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, said the FSOC had released a report in accordance with President Joe Biden’s executive order on crypto, detailing potential financial stability risks of digital assets and regulatory gaps. The report identified regulatory gaps including the spot market for cryptoassets that were not securities subject to “limited direct …