This week, a United States federal district judge ruled that an allegedly fraudulent crypto token meets the definition of a commodity. That brought the case under the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) purview, which has long argued that virtual currencies constitute commodities. Here what it means — and how the watchdog has been supporting its stance on cryptocurrencies’ legal status.
The regulatory approach to cryptocurrencies in the U.S. is complex. While the Congress holds supreme power over federal regulatory agencies like the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the CFTC, it has not issued any guidelines on the matter to date.