For anyone like me who had no context as to whether $6.5M is a lot or a little, it's 1.8% of their 2020 profit.<p>So, actually I still have no idea if that's a lot or a little. But at least I know a couple numbers.
Notice: the CFTC's primary jurisdiction comes from the fact that Bitcoin <i>futures</i> products rely on Coinbase's spot market activity.<p>Congress recently gave the CFTC some limited power to regulate spot market trading practices directly. But in general, the federal government does not regulate private property, only certain kinds of investment contracts (securities and futures). These new powers of the CFTC are untested and but does embolden them to analyze spot market activity more in an effort to enforce their more time tested regulatory ability in the futures market.<p>It is why the CFTC bothers to mention the following:<p><i>"Reporting firms such as Crypto Facilities Ltd., which publishes the CME Bitcoin Real Time Index, and CoinMarketCap OpCo, LLC, which posts such transactional information on its website, received access to Coinbase’s transactional information via Coinbase’s Application Programming Interface, while the NYSE Bitcoin Index, received it directly in transmissions from Coinbase."</i><p>But the newer powers are why they also mention that it was happening in the Litecoin market too. So its a mixture of "while we're at it, lets talk about these other markets that don't have derivatives and rope that in, but lets not make a case specifically about that"<p>I'm glad the CFTC has the ability and assertiveness now to make a statement like this. There are some rampant shady practices from all exchange players in the crypto space. I am really glad how well the US-based ones have improved, but I'm still surprised about what is considered normal.
Unfortunately, exchanges like Coinbase still ironically help prevent more attacks when it comes to asset pricing (decentralized match making is ah... not that secure or sane.) Potentially you could build something like the equivalent of Transfer Wise but for placing orders on exchanges if you don't trust that a certain exchange as playing fair.<p>The meta exchange would have accounts on all major exchanges with USD and BTC balances. When you place orders, it trades from its balance on other exchanges, maybe splitting them up between multiple sites. The exchange would then instantly credit your balance when orders were filled and track who owned what on its backend (which would only hold BTC and USD deposits -- no trading engine.) Could work really well if you kept wallets well stocked.<p>Am half asleep here. Prob already done. I know there are programs for managing multiple user accounts. But anyone doing something like the above? Would sure be useful I imagine
basically illegally washtrading to themselves to get price advantage and hold an asset they long term belived in and sold to later holders of said bags.... if you think bitcoin is a bag. ymmv... this isn't advice.
Have the community drum up Bitcoin's price so they can compensate for the fine? The CFTC should have no authority over cryptocurrency. Set up an angry Reddit mob and pull a GME on BTC every time someone gets fined.