The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is an independent agency of the US government created in 1974 that regulates the U.S. derivatives markets, which includes futures, swaps, and certain kinds of options.
The Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (CFMA) is United States federal legislation that ensured financial products known as over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives remained unregulated. It was signed into law on December 21, 2000 by President Bill Clinton. It clarified the law so most OTC derivative transactions between "sophisticated parties" would not be regulated as "futures" under the Commodity Exchange Act of 1936 (CEA) or as "securities" under the federal securities laws. Instead, the major dealers of those products would continue to have their dealings in OTC derivatives supervised by their federal regulators under general "safety and soundness" standards. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission's (CFTC) desire to have "functional regulation" of the market was also rejected. Instead, the CFTC would continue to do "entity-based supervision of OTC derivatives dealers". The CFMA's treatment of OTC derivatives such as credit default swaps has become controversial, as those derivatives played a major role in the financial crisis of 2008 and the subsequent 2008–2012 global recession.
The Securities Exchange Act of 1934 is a law governing the secondary trading of securities in the United States of America. A landmark piece of wide-ranging legislation, the Act of '34 and related statutes form the basis of regulation of the financial markets and their participants in the United States. The 1934 Act also established the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the agency primarily responsible for enforcement of United States federal securities law.
The Garn–St Germain Depository Institutions Act of 1982 is an Act of Congress that deregulated savings and loan associations and allowed banks to provide adjustable-rate mortgage loans. It is disputed whether the act was a mitigating or contributing factor in the savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s.
Virtual currency, or virtual money, is a digital currency that is largely unregulated, issued and usually controlled by its developers, and used and accepted electronically among the members of a specific virtual community. In 2014, the European Banking Authority defined virtual currency as "a digital representation of value that is neither issued by a central bank or a public authority, nor necessarily attached to a fiat currency but is accepted by natural or legal persons as a means of payment and can be transferred, stored or traded electronically." A digital currency issued by a central bank is referred to as a central bank digital currency.
The National Market System (NMS) is a regulatory mechanism that governs the operations of securities trading in the United States. Its primary focus is ensuring transparency and full disclosure regarding stock price quotations and trade executions. It was initiated in 1975, when, in the Securities Acts Amendments of 1975, Congress directed the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to use its authority to facilitate the establishment of a national market system. The system has been updated periodically, for example with the Regulation NMS in 2005 which took into account technological innovations and other market changes.
The Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, commonly referred to as Dodd–Frank, is a United States federal law that was enacted on July 21, 2010. The law overhauled financial regulation in the aftermath of the Great Recession, and it made changes affecting all federal financial regulatory agencies and almost every part of the nation's financial services industry.
A Swap Execution Facility (SEF) is a platform for financial swap trading that provides pre-trade information and a mechanism for executing swap transactions among eligible participants.
A cryptocurrency, crypto-currency, or crypto is a digital currency designed to work as a medium of exchange through a computer network that is not reliant on any central authority, such as a government or bank, to uphold or maintain it. It has, in a financial point of view, grown to be its own asset class. However, on the contrary to other asset classes like equities or commodities, sectors have not been officially defined as of yet though abstract version of them exist.
The Business Risk Mitigation and Price Stabilization Act of 2013 is a bill that passed the United States House of Representatives during the 113th United States Congress. The bill would exempt nonfinancial entities that enter into a swap or a security-based swap transaction from meeting certain margin requirements when the transaction is designed to offset losses or gains in other investments.
H.R. 1003, long title "To improve consideration by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission of the costs and benefits of its regulations and orders" is a bill that was introduced into the United States House of Representatives during the 113th United States Congress. H.R. 1003 would broaden the items for the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) to consider when assessing costs and benefits of a proposed regulation. Further, the bill would require the agency to adopt such a regulation only if it determines that the estimated benefits justify the estimated costs.
The Customer Protection and End User Relief Act was a bill that would have reauthorized the Commodity Futures Trading Commission through 2018 and amended some provisions of the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act.
Heath Price Tarbert is an American lawyer and former government official who served as the 14th Chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) from 2019 to 2021. He previously served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for International Markets and Development and as acting Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs. As of 2023, he is Chief Legal Officer and Head of Corporate Affairs for Circle.
Rostin Behnam (born February 16, 1978) is an American lawyer and government official who currently serves as the 15th chairman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Prior to leading the CFTC, he served as one of five-member CFTC commissioners, having been nominated on July 13, 2017 by President Donald Trump to fulfill a term expiring June 19, 2021. Behnam was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on August 3, 2017, and sworn in as commissioner on September 6, 2017. On January 21, 2021, the commission members unanimously elected Behnam to be acting chairman following President Joe Biden' s inauguration and the resignation of Heath Tarbert, who served as chairman since July 15, 2019. Behnam was re-nominated by President Biden as a commissioner, and simultaneously nominated to chair the agency for a new 5-year term through June 19, 2026. Behnam was unanimously confirmed by the Senate on December 15, 2021, and sworn in as CFTC's chairman and chief administrative officer on January 4, 2022.
Binance Holdings Ltd., branded Binance, is a global company that operates the largest cryptocurrency exchange in terms of daily trading volume of cryptocurrencies. Binance was founded in 2017 by Changpeng Zhao, a developer who had previously created high-frequency trading software. Binance was initially based in China, then moved to Japan shortly before the Chinese government restricted cryptocurrency companies. Binance subsequently left Japan for Malta and currently has no official company headquarters.
A stablecoin is a type of cryptocurrency where the value of the digital asset is supposed to be pegged to a reference asset, which is either fiat money, exchange-traded commodities, or another cryptocurrency.
A security token offering (STO) / tokenized IPO is a type of public offering in which tokenized digital securities, known as security tokens, are sold in security token exchanges. Tokens can be used to trade real financial assets such as equities and fixed income, and use a blockchain virtual ledger system to store and validate token transactions.
Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) is a regulation in European Union (EU) law. It is intended to help streamline the adoption of blockchain and distributed ledger technology (DLT) as part of virtual asset regulation in the EU, while protecting users and investors. MiCA was approved on 20 April 2023 by the EU Parliament but will not be fully applied until December 2024.
The general notion of cryptocurrencies in Europe denotes the processes of legislative regulation, distribution, circulation, and storage of cryptocurrencies in Europe. In April 2023, the EU Parliament passed the Markets in Crypto Act (MiCA) unified legal framework for crypto-assets within the European Union.
Mark P. Wetjen is an American lawyer. In 2011, he was nominated by Barack Obama to serve a five-year term as a Commissioner of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). He also served for five months as acting chairman of the CFTC upon the departure of his predecessor, Gary Gensler.
