Receiving a subpoena from the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission often causes panic by the recipient given the civil and criminal penalties associated with Commodities Exchange Act violations. The recipient may have no advance notice of the subpoena and may be unaware if they are a target of the CFTC’s…
Joseph Kim, a young Chicago trader just pleaded guilty to stealing $3 million worth of cryptocurrency from the firm that employed him and investors. The case, which involves charges of wire fraud, is the first criminal prosecution for cryptocurrency related violations in the city. The 23-year-old trader who appeared before…
A few days before issuing the recent advisory for the cryptocurrency market, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission told the judge in the case against My Big Coin Pay Inc. that cryptocurrencies are commodities, and are therefore within CFTC jurisdiction. The federal judge in Massachusetts is hearing the case against My Big…
On May 21st, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission issued a new document offering valuable guidance for registered market participants. The head of the CFTC’s Division of Market Oversight, Amir Zaidi said in an accompanying press release, “The CFTC staff is committed to providing regulatory clarity as much as possible. As…
The over 80 subpoenas recently issued to companies in the cryptocurrency sector have provided a logical corollary to the agency’s many warnings about ICOs potential violations of security laws. The time for warnings is over. Now, the SEC’s intentions have evolved into enforcement actions, forever changing the scenario for new…
On March 19, 2018, federal prosecutors once again reinforced the notion that cryptocurrencies can be securities, as they upheld their certainty that ICOs offered by Maksim Zaslavskiy through his companies REcoin and Diamond Reserve Club, were in fact, securities, and thus, under the SEC’s jurisdiction. As a criminal case relating…
In a commentary that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Jay Clayton, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, and J. Christopher Giancarlo, chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, referred to the new regulation scenario for cryptocurrency trading. In fact, they expanded the concept to ”distributed ledger technology (DLT)” defined…
In line with its expressed intent to increase its oversight over the cryptocurrency market, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has filed three related fraud suits in a single week. The third lawsuit targets the creators of “My Big Coin,” who allegedly used $6 million dollars received from buyers to pay…
Once in a while, regulators and courts take actions that have no precedent, but which may influence justice over time. That is the case of a recent ruling from a Florida federal judge, who ordered a defendant to disclose that he had “violated commodity laws” whenever he writes or speaks…