JONES DAY TALKS®: CFTC and DOJ Target Derivatives Trading Across Industries
NFA Chairman Chris Hehmeyer Talks Bankruptcy Reform
On September 4, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued a settlement order (the Order) against Universal Navigation Inc. d/b/a Uniswap Labs (Uniswap).1 The Order asserted that Uniswap, through its front-end...more
Stablecoin Demand Increases with Initiatives Announced in Germany, Hong Kong - Recent reports highlight an increasing demand for stablecoins. According to one report, the market cap of the PYUSD stablecoin recently...more
Last week, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York unsealed an indictment against global cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin and two of its founders, Chun Gan and Ke Tang, for allegedly conspiring...more
Last month, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced settled charges against three decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols for various registration and related violations under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA)...more
On March 29, the National Futures Association (“NFA”) promulgated Compliance Rule 2-51, setting forth Requirements for Members and Associates Engaged in Activities Involving Digital Asset Commodities, which includes both...more
U.S. Congress to Hold Oversight Hearing on the Mining of Cryptocurrency - NY DFS to Hire New Deputy Superintendent - Recent Federal Regulator Announcements Signal Changes in Senior Leadership at the SEC, CFTC, and FDIC...more
In September 2021, the market capitalization for digital assets, such as cryptocurrencies and NFTs, was valued at $2.14 trillion. The cryptocurrency market has attracted a variety of fraudulent activities in which the...more
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sent shockwaves across the cryptocurrency industry when it issued a $1.25 million settlement order with Kraken, one of the industry’s largest market participants. The next day,...more
Even those who are most suspicious of the rise of cryptocurrency will likely admit that the underlying blockchain technology and its potential uses are exciting. One use of this technology, decentralized finance, or DeFi, is...more
A sovereign nation’s decision to adopt Bitcoin as legal tender raises interesting questions — and legal ramifications. On June 8, 2021, El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly voted to establish Bitcoin as unrestricted legal...more
There has been recent speculation that banks are about to enter the cryptocurrency markets. This makes a lot of commercial sense: There clearly is customer demand for banks to offer services similar to those they offer for...more
BitMEX, a Seychelles-based centralized exchange for trading derivatives on bitcoin, ether and litecoin, and certain of its executives have been charged with a number of violations under the U.S. Commodity Exchange Act (CEA),...more
In 2020, the price of gold has jumped over 30 percent from $1,517 per ounce on January 3, 2020 to over $2,000 per ounce on August 6, 2020. The spike in the price of gold isn’t yet at the level reached in the 2017 Bitcoin boom...more
On March 24, 2020, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (the Commission or the CFTC) finalized long-awaited interpretive guidance regarding what constitutes the “actual delivery” of a digital asset in the context of...more
On October 10, 2019, CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert commented on Ether’s status as a commodity: “We’ve been very clear on bitcoin: bitcoin is a commodity under the Commodity Exchange Act. We haven’t said anything about Ether –...more
U.S. Developments - U.S. Federal Regulatory Developments - CFTC, FinCEN, and SEC Leaders Release a Join Statement on Digital Assets - On October 11, 2019, the heads of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (“CFTC”),...more
In remarks made at the Yahoo! All Markets Summit in New York, Heath Tarbert, Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said that he believed the Ether cryptocurrency was a “commodity” and should be...more
Because the Nissan leadership scandal is about as well-contained as Chernobyl in the early days [thanks, HBO], French automaker Renault has voted this morning to remove Chief Executive Thierry Bolloré amid concerns over the...more
U.S. Developments - Regulatory Developments - SEC and FINRA Issue Joint Statement on Digital Asset Custody Issues - On July 8, 2019, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Financial Industry...more
A trading firm agreed to settle charges brought both by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission and the Chicago Board of Trade that trading activities it engaged in during pre-opening market periods constituted wash sales....more
U.S. Developments - Regulatory Updates - CFTC Publishes Enforcement Manual - On May 8, 2019, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (“CFTC”) Division of Enforcement (“DOE”) published its first public...more
New York regulators continued an aggressive approach against certain entities engaged in virtual currency businesses when the state's Attorney General’s office obtained an ex parte order precluding companies associated with a...more
In recent years, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has devoted significant resources to addressing how the requirements of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and the regulations thereunder apply to...more
The Ethereum Classic blockchain was the victim of a 51% attack (often called a majority or Sybil attack) on January 5, 2019 that reorganized portions of the blockchain and allowed the attackers to double-spend 219,500 ETC...more
What is virtual currency? Is it money? Is it a commodity? Is it a hybrid of the two or something else entirely? The answer to the question has profound implications for lenders seeking to secure loans with virtual...more