CFTC Commissioner Pham said the KuCoin charges suggest the agency may have violated the SEC’s authority.
Caroline Pham, one of the chairs of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said she believes the regulator may be undermining its sister institution following charges it filed against cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin earlier this week. criticized the institution.
The CFTC joined the U.S. Department of Justice in filing the charges. KuCoin On March 26, he was indicted on charges of illegally operating a digital asset derivatives exchange.
“This appears to suggest that under the Commodities Act, the investors, i.e. the fund shares held by the securities themselves, may constitute a leveraged transaction,” CFTC Commissioner Palm said in a statement Friday. but, ““This interpretation fails to distinguish between investments in funds that are securities that are generally under the jurisdiction of the SEC and the fund’s trading activities that are alleged to be under the jurisdiction of the CFTC,” Pham said. “By converging financial products with financial activities and disrupting the foundations of securities markets, they could undermine the authority of the SEC and undermine decades of strong investor protection laws.”
“Owning stocks is different from trading derivatives,” Pham added.
odds of winning
Over the past year, questions have often been raised about where the CFTC and SEC have authority over the cryptocurrency industry.
For example, the SEC and CFTC are publicly divided on whether Ethereum is a security or a commodity. SEC Chairman Gary Gensler dodged the question but said many cryptocurrencies are securities. The CFTC recently stated this week in its charges against KuCoin: ether This is a product.
CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam said: member of Congress In a congressional hearing earlier this month, the SEC If Ether were structured as a security, CFTC registrants who list Ether as futures contracts would be out of compliance with SEC regulations, calling the situation “significant.”
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