The Article Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC, is having a banner year in crypto enforcement.

Per the commission's annual review released on Tuesday, fiscal yr 2020 featured 7 budgetary relief deportment against firms engaged in illegal action in crypto, which is a new record.

The review said: "In conjunction with the Division'due south Digital Asset Chore Force, the Committee brought a record setting vii cases involving digital assets." These included charges against PanForex for offering leveraged trading to U.Due south. persons without registering in the United States, every bit well as confronting Digital Platinum for classic fraud.

The CFTC is the U.Due south. federal commodities regulator, but it actually only involves itself in the spot market in cases of overt manipulation or deception. As its name suggests, it has a smashing deal more than ability in futures and derivatives markets for commodities, but the question of which cryptocurrencies fall into this category is nevertheless uncertain. Broadly, the committee has treated Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC) as part of its purview, rather than every bit securities.

Interestingly, financial year 2020 concluded on Sept. 30. Likely, the CFTC'due south most bombastic action in recent memory, as far as the crypto community is concerned, was confronting BitMEX — which merely happened on Oct. 1 and, so, did non factor into the study's figures.

Cointelegraph has previously noted that a number of actions around the end of fiscal year 2020 may herald a new crackdown. Then again, government agencies peg their budgets and expenditures to the fiscal yr, so Sept. 30 does stop up being the epicenter of a great bargain of action.

The CFTC'due south written report too applauded its $920 million fine against JPMorgan Chase for market manipulation and spoofing, the largest relief activity in the committee's history.

Gary Gensler, formerly chair of the CFTC, seems set to take a loftier-level position within the fiscal squad of President-elect Joe Biden's assistants. Gensler was known as beingness especially hawkish in relation to Wall Street, merely after leaving the CFTC he found himself teaching courses on blockchain at MIT.