United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is reportedly probing the past activities of popular Asia cryptocurrency exchange, BitMEX.
According to sources familiar with the matter, the investigation is to determine if BitMEX allowed American users to trade on its platform, which isn’t supported by the agency.
Since the regulator sees digital currencies such as Bitcoin to be a Commodity, it reserves the jurisdiction over futures and other derivatives related to them.
While the CEO of BitMEX, Arthur Hayes, is yet to comment on the case, the report referred to the CEO’s statement during an interview in January.
Arthur noted that, although there are chances that clients can mask their location through virtual private networks (VPN) to assign their computer an Internet protocol address from a BitMEX permitted country.
However, the exchange will remove anyone who is trying to trick the filters on BitMEX or flouts the rules place to bar the U.S residents or nationals. The current law excluded the United States residents from trading on BitMEX and other similar crypto-based financial services.
Also, the exchange posted a notice on its website, prohibiting citizens or residents of the Canadian province of Quebec from using the platform under its terms of service.
Following the news today, the exchange and its CEO Hayes could be having a very rigorous time, as Coinformia recently reported that crypto critic Nouriel Roubini just escalated his campaign against BitMEX.
The 60-year-old American Economist believes that BitMEX exposes traders to more risks by allowing them to leverage bets up to 100 times the amount of money they put down, adding that, the exchange “skirts” the rules meant to address money laundering.
The case with Roubini is coming after the two personalities had engaged in a panel nicknamed “Tangle in Taipei,” at the Asia Blockchain Summit in Taiwan.
