Law Decoded: The year of the Crypto Futures Trading Commission, Sept. 25-Oct. 2

Although Law Decoded dogmatically opposes the crypto community's overriding ignorance of proper hyphen usage.

Crypto has seen an overload of news from U.S. agencies, but this week none upstaged the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The CFTC regulates derivatives markets in the U.S. Its authority derives from the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936, but the commission itself dates to 1974, making it 40 years younger than the related regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Recent trends have put increasing authority over crypto markets in the CFTC's hands.

Massive crypto exchange and derivatives platform Bitmex sees landmark charges in the U.S. The CFTC and the Department of Justice filed joint complaints against Bitmex and its founders and an early employee.

The CFTC charges that Bitmex knowingly offered derivatives trading to U.S. investors without registering as a commodities exchange.

As with the Bitmex case, the CFTC is alleging that PaxForex deliberately solicited U.S. retail investors in its futures and swaps trading on Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ether, gold and foreign currencies without registering with the CFTC. PanForex is registered in St. Vincent and the Grenadines - like the Seychelles where Bitmex resides, a famously opaque jurisdiction for company registration.

The CFTC may have been especially interested in PanForex because its derivatives offerings included both crypto and more traditional commodities already established as within the CFTC's purview, providing a clear bridge.

The CFTC is actively corralling crypto platforms offering U.S. persons investments that the CFTC handles, regardless of where in the world they claim to be.

Alongside the CFTC's push in the courts, earlier new bills before the House Financial Services Committee and the Agriculture Committee look to establish national registration for crypto exchanges with the CFTC. Law Decoded has previously written about the new legislation and, as a matter of principle, hates retreading old ground, especially given the ready availability of new and exciting stories.