No Way to Control All Cryptocurrency Fraud, Says CFTC Commissioner

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NEW YORK, May 23 (Reuters) – A top U.S. regulator said on Tuesday there was no way to control all cryptocurrency fraud because there are so many, although his agency is working on several important matters.

Christy Goldsmith Romero, one of the five commissioners of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said cryptocurrency cases make up about 20% of the agency’s portfolio, including recent civil cases against Binance exchanges. and FTX.

“There’s just a lot of fraud in the space,” Goldsmith Romero said at a white-collar crime lecture at the New York Bar Association. “There is simply no way to control all fraud, but we have to do something.”

CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam has called for greater authority from lawmakers for the agency to oversee spot crypto markets.

Goldsmith Romero pushed back against the idea that there was a “turf war” between the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission over crypto regulation, but acknowledged that many industry products are new and that the agencies were “still trying to figure it out”.

She also said crypto firms shouldn’t view the CFTC as a potentially friendlier regulator than the deeper-pocketed SEC.

“I don’t like the idea of ​​the CFTC being somehow light,” Goldsmith Romero said. “‘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 implementing a bogus compliance program.

Zhao called the complaint an “incomplete account of the facts”.

The CFTC v. FTX case, now bankrupt, accuses the exchange and founder Sam Bankman-Fried of causing the loss of more than $8 billion in customer deposits.

Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to related criminal charges from the US Department of Justice.

Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Editing by Cynthia Osterman

Our standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Luke Cohen

Thomson Reuters

New York Federal Courts Reports. Previously, he worked as a correspondent in Venezuela and Argentina.

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