The Commodity Futures Trading Commission continues to push hard to protect US citizens from the cryptocurrency market.
James McDonald, CFTC’s Director of Enforcement, made the following announcement:
“The CFTC will as ever work to safeguard our markets, including the growing markets for digital assets such as Bitcoin, from fraud, and will act in cooperation with our counterparts in criminal law enforcement where needed.”
Another, but not the least, victim of the CFTC was Jon Barry Thomson, who acknowledged guilt to the charge of convincing two investors to transfer to him more than $7 million for a Bitcoin investment that didn`t even get through.
The previous day, the regulatory institution had started a lawsuit against the crypto exchange BitMEX. The exchange and its functionaries are accused of serving an unlicensed trading platform and of violation of the legislation countering money laundering.
The defendants` side includes BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes, co-founders Ben Delo and Samuel Reed, the companies HDR Global Trading Limited and 100x Holdings Limited, as well as their subsidiaries. As reported by the Commission, since its creation back in 2014, BitMEX has offered clients illegal services for crypto trading with funds they acquired through borrowing and similar schemes in the amount of about $1 trillion. Furthermore, the exchange did not make any attempt to be registered with the CFTC, and didn`t care to introduce KYC and AML methods for its customers.
The crusade against the stock exchange turned into serious losses – after information about the lawsuit, traders rushed to leave the platform and withdraw their money. According to analysts, in the first day after the announcement, over 42,000 Bitcoins worth more than $443 million were withdrawn from the exchange. It is assumed that 170,000 Bitcoins ($1.8 billion) were stored on the exchange, which means that almost 25% of the funds on it.
