Thank you for that kind introduction.  As is customary, I’ll start with the standard disclaimer:  These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), its Commissioners, or CFTC staff.

I’ve now been the CFTC’s Director of Enforcement for six months.  I arrived directly from a brief stretch at a major law firm, following more than a decade at the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY), where, among other things, I co-led the Complex Frauds and Cybercrime Unit, and served as a senior member of the Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force.  I am genuinely honored to deliver this keynote address and kick off today’s program, which I’ve attended for many years.  Whether as an attendee getting CLE credit, a panelist, or even today as the keynote speaker, I have long relied on this conference to provide concise and relevant information delivered by those who have their boots on the ground.

So far, one of the things that has struck me since joining the CFTC—besides the talent and dedication of the staff—is the expansiveness of our regulatory landscape.  The CFTC-regulated derivatives markets are vast, including commodity futures, options, and swaps.

That presented a challenge as I was considering where to focus my remarks today.  The headlines would have directed me to weigh in on the debate on “regulation by enforcement” in the digital asset markets, a characterization that suggests some measure of overreach by regulators where legislation and regulation of a particular product or practice is ill-defined.  But I want to talk instead about the regulated space that already exists for digital assets and discuss how, in the words of Chairman Behnam, “The CFTC has risen to the challenges brought on by the burgeoning digital asset market by ensuring that the markets and market participants acting within its jurisdiction comply with their statutory and regulatory requirements.”[1]  The CFTC has risen to the challenge in a remarkable fashion. To use concrete numbers, to date the Commission has brought approximately 115 matters relating to digital assets, including 33 announced so far during this fiscal year.  And these cases are significant:  to date courts or the Commission have ordered over $4.3 billion in penalties, restitution and disgorgement.

Today, I want to explain in some detail how the CFTC has risen to the challenge in one particular area, a major subset of those more than 115 matters—enforcement in the derivatives markets for digital assets.  As we all know, derivatives are financial instruments that derive their value from something else, like a benchmark or physical commodity.  Derivatives have long existed for digital assets—the first Bitcoin derivative product was listed for trading in 2014.  I think it is largely lost in the public consciousness that the CFTC has been bringing significant, exchange-level cases in this area of the law for almost a decade, with several precedent-setting decisions under Chairman Behnam’s leadership.  Indeed, just last week we announced settlements with three DeFi platforms offering unregulated derivative products.[2]

I’ll start with a brief overview of the CFTC’s mission and purpose, then highlight the CFTC’s remarkable success in bringing impactful cases in the derivatives markets for digital assets that have changed the landscape for the better, and end with some concluding thoughts on the future.

1. The CFTC’s Purpose

Most people don’t appreciate the role the CFTC plays in protecting the integrity of the derivatives markets through establishing a course of sound regulation and then monitoring and enforcing the rules of the road through enforcement.  Historically, these markets served America’s farmers and ranchers, giving them a tool to protect against price risks throughout the supply chain—from droughts, from storms, from war, from changes to international trade far beyond their control.  Over time, the derivatives markets expanded to provide tools for manufacturers, pension funds, and financial entities needing to manage for additional risks such as currency and interest rate risk.  By providing a means for facilitating risk management and price discovery, the derivatives markets contribute to financial stability and predictability of prices that impact the daily lives of all Americans—from groceries to gasoline, from building materials to mortgage rates.

Through the Commodity Exchange Act, Congress both mandates and empowers the CFTC to implement and enforce rules and regulations aimed at fostering open, transparent, competitive, and financially sound markets; preventing and deterring misconduct and market disruptions; and protecting all market participants from fraud, manipulation, and abusive practices.  At the same time, we are charged with promoting responsible innovation and fair competition.  The CFTC accomplishes its mission through a system of effective self-regulation of trading facilities, clearing systems (central counterparties), market participants, and market professionals; direct oversight; and a strong enforcement program.[3]

The Commodity Exchange Act also has deep roots in protecting individuals from fraud and abuse.  The original impetus for the Act is found, in part, in the bucket shops of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.[4]  The bucket shops were unregulated and often unscrupulous businesses that let people gamble on commodities prices, offering the promise of high profits and easy money but then looting client accounts for personal purposes, trading against their customers to wipe the customers out entirely, wasting customers’ assets with foolish bets, or simply absconding with the clients’ money.  In other words, in unregulated markets, unsavory operators took advantage of naïve individuals hungry for riches.[5]

In reaction to these abuses and harm to individuals and the larger commodities and futures markets, in 1921 Congress passed the Futures Trading Act, which authorized the Secretary of Agriculture to designate relevant futures exchanges as “contract markets.”  Following a decision by the Supreme Court that the Futures Trading Act was an unconstitutional use of Congress’s taxing power, Congress enacted the Grain Futures Act, which was based on the interstate commerce clause and banned off-contract-market futures trading rather than taxing it.  Ultimately, in 1936, Congress passed the Commodity Exchange Act, which established the Commodity Exchange Administration within the Department of Agriculture that would later be replaced by the CFTC upon the passage of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act of 1974.[6]  Not only did the 1974 Act solidify our existence as a stand-alone, independent agency, but it expanded the definition of “commodity” covered by the Commodity Exchange Act from an enumerated list of agricultural commodities to include “all services, rights, and interests” that could be the subject of a futures contract.[7]

The major takeaway is that Congress created a regulatory system that requires commodity derivative transactions to be conducted on regulated exchanges, and that in its modern form permits only registered futures commission merchants to solicit or accept orders for and accept funds to margin such transactions.  And registrants must comply with various requirements to improve market integrity and promote other important policies, while protecting individuals from fraud and abuse.  Critically, it works to ensure that retail customers who are entering into the volatile and highly risky world of commodity derivatives trading are doing so through regulated and registered companies.

Just as they did a century ago with bucket shops, today’s investors in digital assets face the risk of fraud and abuse—a risk magnified by the prospect of dealing with unregulated firms whose transparency, integrity and solvency can be questionable.

So, given the history and the current landscape, what is the Commission’s role with respect to digital asset derivatives?

2. Current Status of Digital Asset Regulation

Perhaps surprisingly to those outside the derivatives industry, there is already a considerable amount of regulated activity today because the regulatory structure put in place a century ago in reaction to bucket shops applies to digital asset derivatives.  Under the commodities laws, the CFTC treats derivatives products based on digital asset commodities the same as we treat cattle or soybean futures—that is, they are generally subject to and are expected to comply with the Commodity Exchange Act and Commission Regulations.  So, today, you can trade futures and options on Bitcoin or Ether on a CFTC regulated exchange, subject to all the same legal protections and regulatory safeguards that you would have if you were trading gold, wheat or oil futures and options.[8]

3. The CFTC’s Early Digital Asset Enforcement Actions—TeraExchange, Coinflip, and Bitfinex

For the regulatory system to function, there must be a level playing field.  If there are ways to subvert the regime by offering similar products not subject to the CFTC’s core principles, customer protections, market practices, and other requirements, the foundations for the regulatory system are weakened.  In order to preserve the regulatory system and protect our markets and market participants, the Commission has aggressively pursued bad actors in the digital asset commodity space.

In 2015—ancient history in the world of digital assets—the Commission’s enforcement stance in the digital asset space became public in two actions: Coinflip and TeraExchange.  Coinflip was a firm that advertised a product that “connected buyers and sellers of standardized Bitcoin options and futures contracts,” listing numerous put and call options contracts with Bitcoin as the underlying asset on its platform.  The Commission examined those products and determined—for the first time—that Bitcoin is a commodity.  The Commission found that the products in question were swaps which, under the Commodity Exchange Act, can only be traded on a designated contract market or swap execution facility registered with the Commission.  And the Coinflip order found that by offering these products, Coinflip was operating as an unregistered exchange, and therefore was ordered to, as lawyers say, “cease and desist”—and as a lay person might say, “stop doing the illegal thing.”[9]

At the same time Coinflip was making headlines, the CFTC was pursuing a case against a CFTC-registered entity called TeraExchange.  TeraExchange had registered as a swap execution facility, or SEF, and listed certain types of digital asset derivatives.  As it launched, TeraExchange arranged for two parties—the only two parties who had trading privileges on the exchange—to execute what Tera called at the time “round-trip trade with the same price in, same price out (i.e. no P/L [profit/loss] consequences)” in a Bitcoin-based swap.  Tera employees even initiated video calls with each of the traders to walk them through the initial trade and, six minutes later, the second trade which economically offset the first trade; the trades were intended to negate, and did negate, any market risk.[10]  This was a wash trade, the kind of trade our laws have always prohibited: wash trades feed false information to the markets, misleading the rest of the market about the actual demand for a product, and creating a false impression of higher volumes in those markets.  And that is precisely what TeraExchange did: the exchange touted the transaction as “the first [B]itcoin derivative transaction to be executed on a regulated exchange”—thus granting the first Bitcoin derivative transaction on a regulated exchange the dubious honor of also leading directly to the first CFTC enforcement action relating to a digital asset transaction executed on a regulated exchange.

In 2016, the Commission acted against BitFinex, a foreign-based company that was offering digital asset derivative products without registering with the Commission.[11]  Bitfinex had been operating an online platform for trading various digital assets and offered leveraged and margined trading.  Without getting into the minutia, this activity is impermissible: with limited exceptions, the Commodity Exchange Act only permits margined, leveraged, or financed retail commodity transactions on a CFTC-registered exchange, which BitFinex was not. The Commission imposed a civil monetary penalty and ordered Bitfinex to cease and desist from its various unregulated activities.

4. Recent Exchange-Level Cases Against BitMEX and Binance

Those cases were in the beginning—two years before the first Bitcoin futures contracts were listed on a major exchange.  And as the market for digital asset derivatives grew, so have our enforcement efforts.  In recent years, the Commission has prosecuted large-scale, exchange-level cases in the derivatives space involving digital assets.

One striking example was our landmark action against BitMEX and its three founders in 2021.  There the Commission—acting in parallel with criminal authorities—filed a complaint alleging that BitMEX and its founders had violated the Commodity Exchange Act and Commission Regulations by illegally operating a digital asset derivatives trading platform and violating CFTC rules by failing to implement know-your-customer (KYC) procedures, a customer information program, and anti-money laundering (AML) procedures.[12]  The complaint alleged that the company accepted over $11 billion in assets from at least 85,000 customers with U.S. connections and was deliberately marketing to and trading with U.S. customers.  Beyond that, the complaint alleged that BitMEX was deliberately evading U.S. regulation by, for example, encouraging the use of VPNs by U.S.-based customers to obscure the customers’ locations and coaching U.S. clients to incorporate off-shore entities to trade at BitMEX.

The Commission’s actions ultimately led to resolutions against both the firms and the individual founders; resolutions that included not only civil monetary penalties of $100 million for the relevant entities and $10 million each for three culpable individuals, but a broad range of remedial measures designed to prevent U.S. persons from trading on BitMEX’s trading platforms and essentially eliminating BitMEX’s U.S. business functions.[13]

More recently, the Commission filed a complaint against three Binance entities, Binance’s CEO, and Binance’s first CCO.[14]  The complaint alleges that Binance illegally solicited U.S. investors to enter into digital asset derivative transactions. The complaint further alleges that, since 2017, Binance took a calculated approach to increase the number of U.S. persons trading on its platform despite publicly stating its purported intent to “block” or “restrict” customers located in the United States from accessing the platform, and that Binance had failed to register with the CFTC as a designated contract market, swap execution facility, or as a futures commission merchant.  This major case—the first charging a violation of a CFTC regulation prohibiting willful evasion of the federal commodities laws—is pending.

5. DeFi Cases – the Latest Frontier

The cases I have described so far involved centralized exchanges, businesses which, among other things, generally took custody of customers’ digital assets in connection with the transactions at issue.  But there is an entirely separate space, fraught with unique risks, in which businesses have attempted to cut out the custodial middleman, and to offer customers the ability to transact without third parties taking custody of their assets.  This is decentralized finance, often called “DeFi.”  DeFi protocols are collections of smart contracts on blockchains that replicate traditional commodity derivatives and spot markets in a purportedly decentralized and permissionless way.  These DeFi protocols offer digital asset derivative transactions—transactions that must, in many cases, be offered on a CFTC-registered platform and comply with required core principles designed to protect customers, be offered only to customers following required “know your customer” and “AML” rules, and comply with other rules.

The existence of unregulated DeFi exchanges is an obvious threat to the markets regulated and customers protected by the CFTC, and it is one we have taken very seriously.  For example, small errors in smart contract code can—and have—been exploited by wrongdoers, resulting in the potential for customer losses in the tens or hundreds of millions.  The CFTC requires regulated exchanges—as well as clearinghouses and swap data repositories—to follow a series of core principles addressing subjects like the treatment of customer assets and risk management, and requiring that contracts trading on the exchange not be susceptible to manipulation.  These core principals help to protect exchange customers from the kind of customer harm experienced by DeFi participants.  We have thus acted forcefully to address these unregistered and unregulated activities.

For example, in 2021, the CFTC entered an order settling charges with Polymarket, which had been offering off-exchange event-based binary options contracts (for example, regarding the future price of Ether or whether a particular person would win an election).[15]  The Commission found that these contracts were swaps under the CFTC’s jurisdiction, and therefore could only be offered on a registered exchange.  The CFTC ordered Polymarket to pay a civil monetary penalty, wind down the markets that did not comply with the Commodity Exchange Act and Commission Regulations, and cease and desist from further violations. Polymarket thus stands for a fundamental principle: that all derivatives markets must operate within the law regardless of the technology or legal structure used.

The Ooki DAO case is another illustrative example of CFTC enforcement in the DeFi space—and of a disturbing trend of entities creating technological or other schemes to structure their business in patent attempts to circumvent regulatory requirements.  There, the founders of the DAO’s predecessor LLC created a for-profit trading platform allowing users anywhere in the world to enter into leveraged and margined retail commodity transactions.  As previously noted, the law here is unequivocal—only a regulated exchange can offer those transactions to most people.  But the founders apparently viewed their platform as beyond the law, touting the lack of KYC or AML verification as a feature, even though customer verification was required for their business.  The founders then made their evasive purpose clear when they moved control of the trading protocol from an LLC to a DAO—a decentralized autonomous organization—controlled by certain token holders who had the right to vote on all of the ordinary business questions (for example, how the protocol should be marketed and what sorts of interest rates should be offered) that the LLC structure had handled before.  The founders were explicit in their goal when creating a DAO—saying publicly their goal was to “future proof” the protocol so that when regulators came, they could claim no one could do anything because control had been given to the community.

We responded by issuing an order settling charges against the founders and the DAO’s predecessor LLC and filing a complaint against the DAO itself.[16]  The CFTC then prevailed in its precedent-setting litigation against the DAO, which established that the Commission can sue and serve DAOs; that DAOs are persons under the Commodity Exchange Act; and that this DAO violated the law.[17]  So to those advising clients, this case made clear:  the DAO structure doesn’t put anyone above the law.

As I mentioned earlier, last week, we expanded those efforts when we announced the resolution of three actions as part of a sweep of DeFi firms.  In the first such matter, Deridex created a decentralized exchange where users could trade perpetual contracts, a leveraged derivative product with no expiration, whose value was based on the relative prices of two digital assets.  Likewise, Opyn created a blockchain-based digital asset trading platform that enabled leveraged exposure to digital assets.  And ZeroEx, Inc. designed and deployed a decentralized exchange which let users exchange a wide variety of digital assets, including certain leveraged tokens.[18]  Each of these three platforms was offering and confirming off-exchange leveraged or margined retail commodity transactions, and engaging in other activities that required CFTC registration, yet had not done so.  Through these orders, the platforms agreed to cease the unlawful aspects of their operations and pay civil monetary penalties.

All of this is to say, the CFTC has brought groundbreaking actions in the DeFi space standing for the proposition that when offering core derivative products based on digital assets to the public—whether in a centralized or decentralized manner—you must comply with the law.  And as we’ve shown in Polymarket, Ooki DAO, Opyn, Deridex and ZeroEx, we will do everything in our power to ensure that digital asset commodity transactions that should be conducted on regulated derivatives exchanges are in fact conducted on those exchanges.  Going forward, I intend for DeFi to be a significant and continuing focus for the Division of Enforcement.

6. Success in the Spot Digital Asset Markets to Protect the Integrity of the Derivatives Markets

The Commission has also brought well-known cases against fraudsters ranging from small-time crooks to billion-dollar scams.  For example, the Commission filed actions against FTX, Alameda, Sam Bankman-Fried, and other FTX-related individuals for fraud.[19]  Earlier this year, we brought an action against Avraham Eisenberg for a digital heist in which, through market manipulation, we allege he unlawfully obtained over $110 million in digital assets from a purportedly decentralized digital asset exchange.[20]  This summer, the Commission filed suit against Alexander Mashinksy and the Celsius Network charging the defendants with fraud and material misrepresentations in connection with the operation of its digital asset-based finance program.[21]  These matters are pending.

Perhaps less well known is that we have also used our enforcement authority in the spot markets to bring successful cases, including cases against Coinbase and Tether, ordering Coinbase to pay $6.5 million for false, misleading and inaccurate reporting and wash trading;[22] and ordering Tether to pay penalties totaling $41 million for false claims that the USDT stablecoin was fully backed by U.S. Dollars.[23]

Now to be clear, our jurisdiction in this space is limited.  The CFTC does not have regulatory authority over the spot market for digital asset commodities.  Our authority in the spot market is limited to prosecuting fraud and manipulation.  We have this authority because a well-functioning derivatives market relies on a sound underlying spot market.  And the matters we can bring relating to spot markets are important to protect retail investors and to help protect the integrity of the market for digital asset derivatives.  But, as our Chairman has observed, there is a “clear regulatory gap over the spot market for digital assets that are not securities” and thus a need for legislation to address this gap and grant the CFTC the additional authority to do just that.[24]

7. Concluding Remarks

It is the derivatives markets that I want to end on.  The CFTC has come a long way since the Commodity Exchange Act was passed.  We regulate incredibly complex financial products, including now derivatives on digital assets.  The technology in this space is also rapidly changing, providing new avenues for those who want to evade our regulatory regime.

But our mission remains the same—discharging our statutory duties to enforce fair and competitive markets while protecting the public from unregulated markets and unscrupulous actors.  As the actions I described demonstrate, the CFTC will keep up with developments in the relatively new market for derivatives on digital assets and will continue to prosecute those who try to avoid the US regulatory regime no matter how esoteric their means of avoiding that regime.

Thank you for the time this morning.

[2] See Press Release Number 8774-23, CFTC, CFTC Issues Order Against Operators of Three DeFi Protocols for Offering Illegal Digital Asset Derivatives Trading (Sept. 7, 2023), CFTC Issues Orders Against Operators of Three DeFi Protocols for Offering Illegal Digital Asset Derivatives Trading | CFTC.

[3] Commodity Exchange Act § 3, 7 U.S.C. § 5.

[4] See generally Jerry Markham, The History of Commodity Futures Trading and its Regulation (Praeger Publishers 1987).

[5] See, e.g., Barry W. Taylor, The Commodity Exchange Act and Other Bucket Shop Laws: The Future of Commodity Swaps Without Preemption at 10-11, 689 The Swap Market in 1990 at 501 (PLI Corp. L. & Practice Course Handbook Series, 1990), available at https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4072194; see also John Stassen, The Commodity Exchange Act In Perspective: A Short and Not-So Reverent History of Futures Trading Legislation in the United States, 39 Washington and Lee Law Review 825 (1982); Edwin Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator (Wiley rev. ed. 2006) (1923).

[6] See History of the CFTC, available at https://www.cftc.gov/About/HistoryoftheCFTC/history_precftc.html.

[7] Commodity Futures Trading Commission Act of 1974, Pub. L. No. 93-463, 88 Stat. 1389 (1974); see Commodity Exchange Act § 1a(9), 7 U.S.C. § 1a(9).

[8] See, e.g., Bitcoin Futures and Options (last accessed Sept. 5, 2023), available at https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/cryptocurrencies/bitcoin/bitcoin.html; Ether Futures and Options (last accessed Sept. 5, 2023), available at https://www.cmegroup.com/markets/cryptocurrencies/ether/ether.html.

[9] See Press Release Number 7231-15, CFTC, CFTC Orders Bitcoin Options Trading Platform Operator and its CEO to Cease Illegally Offering Bitcoin Options and to Cease Operating a Facility for Trading or Processing of Swaps without Registering (Sept. 16, 2015), CFTC Orders Bitcoin Options Trading Platform Operator and its CEO to Cease Illegally Offering Bitcoin Options and to Cease Operating a Facility for Trading or Processing of Swaps without Registering | CFTC.

[10] See Press Release Number 7240-15, CFTC, CFTC Settles with TeraExchange LLC for Failing to Enforce Prohibitions on Wash Trading and Prearranged Trading in Bitcoin Swap (Sept. 23, 2015), CFTC Settles with TeraExchange LLC for Failing to Enforce Prohibitions on Wash Trading and Prearranged Trading in Bitcoin Swap | CFTC.

[11] See Press Release Number 7380-16, CFTC, CFTC Orders Bitcoin Exchange Bitfinex to Pay $75,000 for Offering Illegal Off-Exchange Financed Retail Commodity Transactions and Failing to Register as a Futures Commission Merchant (June 1, 2016), CFTC Orders Bitfinex to Pay $75,000 for Offering Illegal Off-Exchange Financed Retail Commodity Transactions and Registration Violations | CFTC.

[12] See Press Release Number 8270-20, CFTC, CFTC Charges BitMEX Owners with Illegally Operating a Cryptocurrency Derivatives Trading Platform and Anti-Money Laundering Violations (Oct. 1, 2020), CFTC Charges BitMEX Owners with Illegally Operating a Cryptocurrency Derivatives Trading Platform and Anti-Money Laundering Violations | CFTC.

[13] See Press Release Number 8412-21, CFTC, Federal Court Orders BitMEX to Pay $100 Million for Illegally Operating a Cryptocurrency Trading Platform and Anti-Money Laundering Violations (Aug. 10, 2021), Federal Court Orders BitMEX to Pay $100 Million for Illegally Operating a Cryptocurrency Trading Platform and Anti-Money Laundering Violations | CFTC; Press Release Number 8522-22, CFTC, Federal Court Orders BitMEX’s Three Co-Founders to Pay a Total of $30 Million for Illegally Operating a Cryptocurrency Derivatives Trading Platform and Anti-Money Laundering Violations (May 5, 2022), Federal Court Orders BitMEX’s Three Co-Founders to Pay a Total of $30 Million for Illegally Operating a Cryptocurrency Derivatives Trading Platform and Anti-Money Laundering Violations | CFTC.

[14] See Press Release Number 8680-23, CFTC, CFTC Charges Binance and Its Founder, Changpeng Zhao, with Willful Evasion of Federal Law and Operating an Illegal Digital Asset Derivatives Exchange (Mar. 27, 2023), CFTC Charges Binance and Its Founder, Changpeng Zhao, with Willful Evasion of Federal Law and Operating an Illegal Digital Asset Derivatives Exchange | CFTC.

[15] See Press Release Number 8478-22, CFTC, CFTC Orders Event-Based Binary Options Markets Operator to Pay $1.4 Million Penalty (Jan. 3, 2022), CFTC Orders Event-Based Binary Options Markets Operator to Pay $1.4 Million Penalty | CFTC.

[16] See Press Release Number 8590-22, CFTC, CFTC Imposes $250,000 Penalty Against bZeroX, LLC and Its Founders and Charges Successor Ooki DAO for Offering Illegal, Off-Exchange Digital-Asset Trading, Registration Violations, and Failing to Comply with Bank Secrecy Act (Sept. 22, 2022), CFTC Imposes $250,000 Penalty Against bZeroX, LLC and Its Founders and Charges Successor Ooki DAO for Offering Illegal, Off-Exchange Digital-Asset Trading, Registration Violations, and Failing to Comply with Bank Secrecy Act | CFTC.

[17] See Press Release Number 8715-23, CFTC, Statement of CFTC Division of Enforcement Director Ian McGinley on the Ooki DAO Litigation Victory (June 9, 2023), Statement of CFTC Division of Enforcement Director Ian McGinley on the Ooki DAO Litigation Victory | CFTC.

[18] See Press Release Number 8774-23, supra note 2.

[19] See Press Release Number 8638-22, CFTC, CFTC Charges Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX Trading and Alameda with Fraud and Material Misrepresentations (Dec. 13, 2022), CFTC Charges Sam Bankman-Fried, FTX Trading and Alameda with Fraud and Material Misrepresentations | CFTC.

[20] See Press Release Number 8647-23, CFTC, CFTC Charges Avraham Eisenberg with Manipulative and Deceptive Scheme to Misappropriate Over $110 million from Mango Markets, a Digital Asset Exchange (Jan. 9, 2023), CFTC Charges Avraham Eisenberg with Manipulative and Deceptive Scheme to Misappropriate Over $110 million from Mango Markets, a Digital Asset Exchange | CFTC.

[21] See Press Release Number 8749-23, CFTC, CFTC Charges Alexander Mashinsky and Celsius Network, LLC with Fraud and Material Misrepresentations in Massive Commodity Pool Scheme Involving Digital Asset Commodities (July 13, 2023), CFTC Charges Alexander Mashinsky and Celsius Network, LLC with Fraud and Material Misrepresentations in Massive Commodity Pool Scheme Involving Digital Asset Commodities | CFTC.

[22] See Press Release Number 8369-21, CFTC, CFTC Orders Coinbase Inc. to Pay $6.5 Million for False, Misleading, or Inaccurate Reporting and Wash Trading (Mar. 19, 2021), CFTC Orders Coinbase Inc. to Pay $6.5 Million for False, Misleading, or Inaccurate Reporting and Wash Trading | CFTC.

[23] See Press Release Number 8450-21, CFTC, CFTC Orders Tether and Bitfinex to Pay Fines Totaling $42.5 Million (Oct. 15, 2021), CFTC Orders Tether and Bitfinex to Pay Fines Totaling $42.5 Million | CFTC.

[24] See Rostin Behnam, Chairman, CFTC, Testimony of Chairman Rostin Behnam Before the House Committee on Agriculture Hearing on the Future of Digital Assets: Providing Clarity for Digital Asset Spot Markets (June 6, 2023), Testimony of Chairman Rostin Behnam Before The Future of Digital Assets: Providing Clarity for Digital Asset Spot Markets, U.S. House Committee on Agriculture | CFTC.