Key Takeaways
- The CFTC has placed a $1.25 million fine on Kraken, stating it failed to register as a futures merchant.
- Kraken will need to cease and desist certain activities; this will presumably not affect its main crypto exchange.
- Kraken has not yet commented on the matter.
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Kraken has been fined by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, according to a statement from the regulator.
Kraken Illegally Offered Futures Trading
The CFTC’s Sept. 28 statement says that Kraken failed to register as a futures commission merchant. As such, it illegally offered margined retail commodities to investors between June 2020 and July 2021.
The CFTC criticized various aspects of Kraken’s service model, noting that users were unable to move assets out of the exchange until repaying obligations. Furthermore, Kraken was able to unilaterally liquidate positions if users did not make repayments within 28 days of exiting a contract, or if the value of the collateral went below a threshold.
The CFTC says that such transactions were “unlawful because they were required to take place on a designated contract market and did not.”
Today’s order requires Kraken to pay a $1.25 million fine and cease and desist activities that violate the relevant regulations.
Presumably, this means that Kraken will only need to suspend its futures trading features, not its main crypto exchange. However, the company has not commented on any service changes.
CFTC Has Targeted Other Exchanges
Kraken is just the latest exchange to be scrutinized by the CFTC. In August, BitMEX settled with the CFTC and FinCEN for $100 million almost two years after the regulators began a probe.
In March, Coinbase was fined $6.5 million by the CFTC over providing false information and enabling wash trading. Coinbase also shut down margin trading this year in response to CFTC regulations.
Less recently, the CFTC fined Bitfinex $75,000 for offering illegal commodity grounds and failing to register its business in an incident dating back to June 2016.
Binance also faced a CFTC probe this year, but it does not seem to have faced any penalties to date.
Disclaimer: At the time of writing this author held less than $75 of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and altcoins.
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