Monday, December 21, 2020
Virtual Currencies as Commodities
In recent years, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC or the Commission) has taken a role as one of the regulators of cryptocurrency in the United States. In this article, we review the CFTC’s regulatory and enforcement approach in this space.
In December 2014, the CFTC stated that virtual currencies are encompassed under the definition of a “commodity” in the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA), and thus subject to its jurisdiction.
[1] Nine months later, in September 2015, the CFTC brought its first enforcement action against an unregistered Bitcoin option trading platform.
[2] With its first action, the CFTC declared that “Bitcoin and other virtual currencies are encompassed in the definition and properly defined as commodities.”