On Wednesday, a top U.S. regulator said her office is investigating several major Bitcoin fraud instances, but there is too much.
Christy Goldsmith Romero, one of five CFTC commissioners, said cryptocurrency issues comprise about 20% of the agency’s portfolio, including recent civil cases against Binance and FTX.
“There’s just a lot of fraud in the space,” Goldsmith Romero said at a New York City Bar Association white-collar crime seminar. “There’s no way we can police all the fraud, but we’ve got to do something.”
CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam wants more authority from lawmakers to regulate spot crypto markets.
Goldsmith Romero denied that the CFTC and SEC were in a “turf war” over crypto regulation but recognized that many of the industry’s products were new and the agencies were “still trying to figure it out.”
She warned crypto firms against viewing the CFTC as a friendlier regulator than the SEC.
“I don’t like the idea that somehow the CFTC is light touch,” Goldsmith Romero added. “‘Light touch regulator’ would never be written on my tombstone.”
IN MARCH, the CFTC sued Binance and Changpeng Zhao, its founder and CEO, for allegedly running a fraudulent compliance program.
Zhao called the allegation an “incomplete recitation of facts.”
The CFTC accuses now-bankrupt FTX and founder Sam Bankman-Fried of losing more than $8 billion in customer deposits.
Bankman-Fried denies U.S. Department of Justice accusations.
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