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Topic: [2018-09-26] U.S. Judge Sides With CFTC on Virtual Currency Oversight (Read 121 times)

legendary
Activity: 1652
Merit: 1483
a few days before CBOE launched bitcoin futures last year, the CFTC sent subpoenas to bitfinex and tether. the consensus at the time---and this seems to be the position taken by the defendant's lawyer---was that the existence of regulated futures markets put bitcoin under the jurisdiction of the CFTC.

this precedent seems to go far beyond that. apparently, anything that can be categorized broadly as a "virtual currency" is now subject to CFTC oversight. 

Quote
Crater’s lawyers moved to dismiss the case, arguing that the CFTC had no authority over the virtual currency because it is neither a tangible good nor a service on which future contracts are being traded - the agency’s typical enforcement purview.

U.S. District Judge Rya Zobel in Boston said on Wednesday that My Big Coin did meet the Commodity Exchange Act’s definition of a commodity, because the law defines commodities in broad categories rather than specific types or brands.

Since both My Big Coin and bitcoin can both be broadly categorized as virtual currencies, and bitcoin futures currently trade on U.S. exchanges, by extension the CFTC has oversight of other virtual currencies including My Big Coin, Zobel found.

i'd be curious to see whether this conclusion survives on appeal......
legendary
Activity: 1288
Merit: 1087
https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/09/26/business/26reuters-usa-cftc-bitcoin.html

I think the main thing to take away from this is that the legal business is still pretty clueless about how to classify crypto. the judge is saying because this piece of crap in the case has some similarities to bitcoin all of them are commodities so the CTFC has jurisdiction over everything.

it doesn't make a bunch of sense to me.
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