Executives for the U.S.-based bitcoin derivatives exchange LedgerX claim to be receiving unfair treatment from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) due to personal biases stemming from a blog post.
LedgerX Disputes CFTC Treatment
According to letters obtained by CoinDesk under the Freedom of Information Act, LedgerX says that former CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo used his personal bias to improperly delay approval for the exchange’s amended Derivatives Clearing Organization registration.
The letter dated July 3, 2019, reads,
We have strong reason to believe that this unreasonable delay that is in clear violation of the Commodity Exchange Act is related to the Chairman’s animus towards a blog post written by our CEO.
The letter continues,
In January [2019], the Chairman called one of our board members and told him that he was going to make sure our DCO order was revoked within two weeks, due to a blog post written by myself the previous year implying that preferential treatment was being given to larger companies so he could ‘cement his legacy.’ This refers to the ICE / Bakkt approval, which was running into issues that were frustrating the chairman.
LedgerX also accused a CFTC staffer of attempting to tamper with an audit they said was “entirely bogus” in the first place. Chief Operating Officer Juthica Chou took to Twitter on Sept. 28 to further explain her platform’s situation,
previous chairman wanted to revoke LX license bc Bakkt efforts not moving along. having no legitimate reason to revoke our license, staff resorted to contacting our independent auditors to tamper with audit to give commission reason to revoke license. staff admitted & apologized
— juthica (@juthica) September 28, 2019
The CFTC has yet to specifically comment on the situation, but a spokesperson said the agency “treats all registered entities equally.”
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