Please consider Federal Judge Rules Virtual Currencies Are Commodities Under the Commodity Exchange Act.
On March 6, 2018, Judge Jack B. Weinstein of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled that virtual currencies are commodities under the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and therefore subject to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) anti-fraud and anti-manipulation enforcement authority.
Granting the CFTC’s request for a preliminary injunction against the defendants who allegedly engaged in deception and fraud involving virtual currency spot markets, Judge Weinstein noted that “[u]ntil Congress clarifies the matter,” the CFTC has “concurrent authority” along with other state and federal administrative agencies and civil and criminal courts over transactions in virtual currency.
In Commodity Futures Trading Commission v. McDonnell et al., the CFTC alleged that the defendants violated the CEA by operating a fraudulent scheme involving virtual currency trading and misappropriating investor funds.The primary issue before the court was whether the CFTC had standing to sue the defendants under the CEA.
The court held that the CFTC can pursue fraud and manipulation claims in virtual currency spot markets.
According to the court, virtual currencies are “‘goods’ exchanged in a market for a uniform quality and value.” As such, the court reasoned that they “fall well-within” the common definition of commodity as well as the CEA’s broad definition of commodity, which includes “all other goods and articles … and all services, rights, and interests … in which contracts for future delivery are presently or in the future dealt in.
New Asset Class
Not a Commodity
My Take
It is silly to believe Bitcoin is not a commodity. Let’s not conflate whether something is a commodity with whether or not something should be regulated.
Silliness aside, it is absolutely absurd to believe Bitcoin will “make them all obsolete”. When you dramatically overstate your case you look foolish in the process.
Regulation Needed?
Have Fun
Back Below $9000
State-sponsored digital currencies are coming, across the board. It is debatable if Bitcoin survives, or it it does, what value is placed on it.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
“Yet Michael the archangel, when contending with the devil he disputed about the body of Moses, durst not bring against him a railing accusation, but said, The Lord rebuke thee.” Jude 1:9
I would say each Bitcoin is a unique finite number of “software” which cannot be created or copied, that’s why everybody can write a new coin and offer it to the market, currently there are hundreds of coins similar to bitcoin. Which ones will prevail, we dont know, but it is clear that most of them will disappear.
Virtual commodity
“A federal judge just ruled that cryptocurrencies are “commodities” under the Commodity Exchange Act. This means jail time for price manipulation.” Unless you are Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan or other protected Wall Street insiders.
“State-sponsored digital currencies are coming, across the board.”
They are already mostly in place and have been for quite a while. All that remains is to eliminate physical cash.
……and whatever random nonsense some clueless, privileged hack happens to “rule” that something he’s too dumb to ever understand “is,” is somehow very important.
As that’s what the drones are told to chant and cheer for, because they are told it is this magical, unquestionably “great” thing masa calls “rule of law.”
……and whatever random nonsense some clueless, privileged hack happens to “rule” that something he’s too dumb to ever understand “is,” is somehow very important.
As that’s what the drones are told to chant and cheer for, because they are told it is this magical, unquestionably “great” thing masa calls “rule of law.”
No one knows what the financial environment will be like tomorrow, 3 months, 6 months and anyone who says they do is Full of Sh-t. We are all guessing. Also, lots of reports of millennials are not going to buy Gold and avoid credit. Again FoS. The facts are 1) the crypto market is tiny compared to any other financial instrument, 2) it will remain volatile until it isn’t, 3) the crypto market is full of fraud and deceit other than that everyone is guessing. I would love for someone to dig in deep why the exchanges are so vulnerable to hacks and why in comparison (%) the stockbrokers are not? Could it be they rushed their development to enter the market or is it due to the anonymity of the cryptos the stolen ones are easy to get rid of where stocks stolen wouldn’t be? Bottomline blockchain is here till its overtaken by faster, better tech. Some will make money off of coins, some will lose. I think once the central banks and the big corporate money is involved the markets will be as manipulated as the fiat and commodity markets are now.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/maven-user-photos/mishtalk/economics/pY98QOHeFE2eAof6gA5bwQ/QL-KxS6gg0G-ZCCVQgx66Q
It is both.
It was the emergence of telephone banking, debit and credit card payment machines and ATMs through the 1970s, in combination with a revolution in financial regulation and the home mortgage market that gave rise to an unprecedented expansion in the credit money supply that continued on right up until this moment.
It is now the emergence of a new form of payment and banking technology, Smartphone Apps & Blockchain, that shall undo the monetary legitimacy of commercial bank credit (or debit) thus far created. Max understands this intuitively, which is why he likens Bitcoin to the new money and the black hole of the financial industry.
I’m sure in mentioning bitcoin, Max meant to say blockchain. Bitcoin will go on being readily conflated with blockchain because it was the first instance of the technology. Much like how we tend to go on calling all vacuum cleaners regardless of their actual brand Hoovers (Or is that an exclusively British inclination, it’s an American brand afterall?). What Max is getting at is that blockchain has outmoded all of the electronic banking infrastructure and that’s a very very big deal Mish!
A huge part of what socially validates the commercial banking prerogative to issue credit that’s of equal status to base currency is the ability of any individual to spend their credit using the banks electronic infrastructure; the infrastructure they possess privately and oligarchically; the Visa and Mastercard cartels. I am talking about debit cards, credits cards, telephone banking and online banking.
If over the following decades people should besides these technologies become accustomed to transferring money through blockchain, much in the way people have been experimenting with PayPal technologies, thinking particularly of mobile App and QR technologies, money belonging to an account that no commercial bank has any sovereignty over, and money that is incapable of monetarily inflating through private issuance of credit, then that would be the end of commercial banking, the lords of the money supply, as we know it.
The run on the banks of the tomorrow shall not be a small army of people lining up outside their local branch intending to withdraw paper cash. Instead it will be a wave of online purchases of one blockchain currency or another, with all the rapidly inflating bank credit in their checking accounts.
Money is anything that is generally accepted as a medium of exchange by the population. It is generally accepted only if its value is generally stable within the populations time horizon (not too much inflation or deflation). Bitcoin is not money. Nor is any of the alt-coins. Commodity becomes a good description. Even better would be “ethereal commodity”.
Think of it as an antimatter commodity, a thing randomly self-annihilating. Most recently, in Japan: $520,000,000,000…poof.
Are tulips commodities? If they are, then so are bitcoins!