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ARTICLE · 12 MARCH 2014

Bitcoin And The CFTC: "Spot"ing The Jurisdictional Hook

Reed Smith
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In the past week, Bitcoin derivatives have been making news. A Bloomberg article highlighted Bitcoin derivatives and platforms for such products, and in an interview on February 28, the CME Group chairman and president, Terry Duffy, announced that the CME Group is beginning to take a preliminary look into Bitcoins.

United StatesFinance and Banking
Todd Zerega
Todd Zerega
Thomas Watterson
Thomas Watterson
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In the past week, Bitcoin derivatives have been making news. A Bloomberg article highlighted Bitcoin derivatives and platforms for such products, and in an interview on February 28, the CME Group chairman and president, Terry Duffy, announced that the CME Group is beginning to take a preliminary look into Bitcoins.

As mentioned in our previous post, the CFTC would have a colorable claim to regulate derivative products of Bitcoins (i.e., Bitcoin futures, swaps, rolling spot Bitcoin transactions, etc.). But what about the standard, everyday exchanges of Bitcoins for money, goods or services (for the ease of reference, we will refer to these exchanges as "Bitcoin Transactions")? This post explores the jurisdictional hooks the CFTC could have over these Bitcoin Transactions.

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