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The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) ordered Kraken to pay $1.25 million dollars in civil monetary penalties for allegedly violating the Commodity Exchange Act. More specifically, Kraken is accused of failing to register as a futures commission merchant and llegally offering margined retail commodity transactions in digital assets. The CFTC's case alleges that Kraken "offered margined retail commodity transactions in digital assets" to ineligible U.S. customers from June 2020 to July 2021. Kraken has since changed its policy on margin trading, but until June 2021 customers needed to close or settle their positions within 28 days. https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8433-21

If the Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) appointed "commodity" status to XRP some see its price exploding to extraordinary levels.

A key aspect of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) spot Ethereum (ETH) exchange-traded fund (ETF) approval is that it considers each ETF to be a "Commodity-Based Trust Share". Several years ago the SEC classified ETH as a commodity, but when ETH migrated to the Proof of Stake (POS) protocol, the SEC reclassified ETH as a security.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Tuesday laid out its view on what it means to take "actual delivery" of a digital asset. The long-awaited guidance is significant because it means that there could be penalties for trades that don't let the buyer take physical possession and control of a coin within 28 days -- the cut off line for when trades in commodities like wheat and oil start to be considered futures contracts.

Binance is reportedly being investigated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) over concerns that it allowed Americans to buy and sell derivatives that violated U.S. rules. The CFTC considers virtual currencies like Bitcoin and Ether to be commodities and claims jurisdiction over their futures and other derivatives. That means crypto platforms face strict customer protection and oversight demands if Americans are trading on them -- regardless of where exchanges are based.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed the Eliminate Barriers to Innovation Act of 2021 (H.R. 1602) which includes a section on digital assets. The legislation seeks to set up a digital asset working group with representatives from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). The overarching goal is to clarify when the SEC has jurisdiction over digital assets, in the case of when they are deemed securities and when the CFTC has a final say, in the case of when digital assets are classified as commodities. https://republicans-financialservices.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=407971

CFTC Chairman Heath Tarbert believes ether is a commodity and falls under the CFTC's jurisdiction. He also anticipates ether futures trading on U.S. markets in the near future. Tarbert agrees with the SEC's previous guidance that bitcoin and ether are not securities.

The U.S. Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) have filed charges against crypto derivatives exchange BitMEX and its owner-operators. They are accused of operating a facility for the trading or processing of swaps without having CFTC approval as a designated contract market or swap execution facility, and operating as a futures commission merchant by soliciting orders for and accepting bitcoin to margin digital asset derivatives transactions, and by acting as a counterparty to leveraged retail commodity transactions. They are also accused of violating anti-money laundering (AML) and know-your-customer (KYC) regulations. https://www.cftc.gov/PressRoom/PressReleases/8270-20

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Gary Gensler said his agency is considering how to split oversight of crypto trading platforms between the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), as most platforms include tokens that fit definitions of securities as well as commodities.

On September 7, 2023, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) issued three enforcement settlement orders against developers of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols. The orders charge Opyn, Inc., Deridex, Inc., and ZeroEx, Inc. (0x) with illegally offering leveraged and margined retail commodity transactions in digital assets through their DeFi protocols. Opyn and Deridex were also charged for operating as unregistered swap execution facilities and engaging in activities that can only lawfully be performed by registered futures commission merchants (FCMs), and for failing to conduct know-your-customer diligence.

"An enhanced special drawing right (SDR), valued by a basket of goods, would provide the global currency and reserve asset the global economy craves. This paper proposes linking the value of the International Monetary Fund's SDR and national currencies that fix their exchange rates to the SDR to a representative basket of widely traded goods. The new "real SDR" would be issued and redeemed passively according to "Currency Board" rules in exchange for financial assets with the same market value as the basket. National currencies and/or an international reserve currency with the same value (i.e. fixed to a common unit of account) would lower the cost of trading by reducing transaction and information costs and exchange rate risk and would thus increase world trade and improve the efficiency of international resource allocation. A system anchored to a goods basket would not have the shortcomings that afflict the gold standard-gold's fluctuating relative value. The indirect redeemability rule, issuing and redeeming real SDRs for financial assets of equivalent value would avoid the shortcoming that makes multi-good commodity standards very costly-¬the need to maintain large reserves of all of the commodities in the basket. The innovative idea of indirect redeemability, discussed by Yeager, Greenfield, and others, keeps the quantity of SDRs equal to the amount demanded when its value is given by the valuation basket, without the need for the monetary authority to warehouse the goods in the basket."

"The Bank of China has opened the path for companies to settle their cross-border payments using the Chinese central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital yuan. The Hong Kong branch of the bank, the second-largest financial institution in the region, has achieved a milestone in serving as an intermediary for the settlement of a $3.4 million bulk commodity payment between Baosteel group, a steel and iron powerhouse, and Bao-trans Enterprises, a manufacturer of premium steel products."

Adam Levitin considers what would happen to customers' custodial holdings if a crypto-asset exchange in the United States were to fail. U.S. law gives substantial protection to the custodial holdings of securities, commodities, or cash deposits by securities or commodities brokers or banks, but no such regime exist for custodial holdings of crypto-assets. Instead, bankruptcy courts are likely to deem the custodial holdings to be property of the bankrupt exchange, rather than of its customers. The customers would merely be general unsecured creditors of the exchange, entitled only to a pro rata distribution of the exchange's residual assets after any secured or priority creditors had been repaid.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) sued crypto exchange Binance and founder Changpeng Zhao on allegations the company knowingly offered unregistered crypto derivatives products in the U.S. against federal law. The suit also alleged that the company directed its employees to spoof their locations through the use of virtual private networks (VPNs). The CFTC is charging Binance with violating laws around offering futures transactions, illegal off-exchange commodity options, failing to register as a futures commissions merchant, designated contract market or swap execution facility, poorly supervising its business, not implementing know-your-customer (KYC) or anti-money laundering (AML) processes and having a poor anti-evasion program. https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ilnd.431767/gov.uscourts.ilnd.431767.1.0_1.pdf

The months-long CFTC probe is focused on whether BitMEX broke rules by allowing Americans to trade on the platform, which isn't registered with the agency, said one of the people who asked not to be named discussing the investigation, which hasn't been made public. The regulator considers virtual currencies like Bitcoin to be commodities, and it has jurisdiction over futures and other derivatives based on them.

The Virtual Commodity Association, a non-profit, independent organization backed by Gemini founders Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, is laying the groundwork to advocate its self-regulatory plans before Congress.

LedgerX admitted Thursday that it has not launched bitcoin futures, as the firm had previously claimed, after the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said it had not approved the exchange to do so.

Bitfinex shareholder and over-the-counter (OTC) trader Zhao Dong has revealed that Tether is planning to launch a cryptocurrency backed by the Chinese renminbi.

The United States Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has confirmed that LedgerX has not yet been approved by the agency to offer physically-settled Bitcoin futures, in a statement obtained by CoinDesk.

"Dalio believes that in this new era of currency devaluation, cash and bonds will not be reliable stores of value. Historically, scarce real assets such as real estate, gold, commodities and-we'd point out-bitcoin are safe havens for wealth and a source of returns in these environments."