SEC Chairman Jay Clayton and CFTC Chairman Christopher Giancarlo testified today before Congress on the subject of virtual currencies. The prepared remarks of both contained very little that they had not already said in previous public comments. (For example, Mr. Clayton repeated that the ICOS he has seen would qualify as a “security” and this need to be registered) Each also referred to the enforcement actions that their agencies had taken (mostly over the past…
The CFTC disclosed today that, on January 16, in a case initially filed under seal, the CFTC sued and froze the assets of the creators of a supposed cryptocurrency called “My Big Coin” who allegedly took $6 million from unwitting buyers and used it to fund shopping sprees and pay off earlier investors. My Big Coin Pay Inc. — a Nevada corporation whose product, the CFTC noted, sounded similar to Bitcoin — its founder Randall…
We have previously discussed the position taken by the U.S. SEC with respect to cryptocurrencies. But the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) also has a role to play. On September 17, 2015, the CFTC brought its first cryptocurrency action against an unregistered Bitcoin trading platform. Coinflip, Inc. d/b/a Derivabit (Coinflip) and its chief executive officer Francisco Riordan were charged operating a facility for the trading or processing of commodity options (offering to connect buyers and…