As the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) strives to become the main regulator for the cryptocurrency market instead of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), it has significantly increased its enforcement in the industry.
Specifically, the CFTC’s Division of Enforcement (DOE) has filed 18 actions involving conduct related to cryptocurrencies, out of a total of 82 enforcement actions brought in the fiscal year 2022, according to the CFTC press release published on October 20.
Aggressive policing of crypto markets
In other words, over 20% of the CFTC’s actions during this fiscal year were related to digital assets, and the agency “continued to devote significant resources to litigating complex cases and achieved several litigation successes.”
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Commenting on these results, chairman Rostin Benham said that:
“This FY 2022 enforcement report shows the CFTC continues to aggressively police new digital commodity asset markets with all of its available tools.”
The enforcement actions covered an alleged $1.7 billion fraud, the manipulation of the Digitex Futures native token, activities of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), as well as failures to register a designated contract market (DCM), swap execution facility (SEF) or futures commission merchant (FCM).
Primary crypto regulator?
Meanwhile, Benham has said that the CFTC was ready for the possibility of regulating crypto, after which he confirmed that he had authorized his agency to start making the necessary preparations to become the primary and fully financed regulator for the crypto industry, as Finbold reported.
In Rostin’s opinion, placing crypto regulation in the hands of the CFTC could drive the growth of the industry, possibly resulting in Bitcoin (BTC) doubling its price as the markets would thrive under a clear regulatory framework and increased confidence of the institutional investors.
‘DeFi killer’ bill
In early August, the United States Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Debbie Stabenow and Senator John Boozman announced they were working on a bipartisan bill that would place digital assets like Bitcoin and Ethereum (ETH) under the jurisdiction of the CFTC.
However, the Digital Commodities Consumer Protection Act (DCCPA) has recently come under fire from the crypto community which condemned it as detrimental to decentralized finance (DeFi) after its draft text was leaked to the public.
