Officials at the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) are reportedly considering an enforcement action against Stephen Ehrlich, the former CEO of crypto lending firm Voyager Digital.
According to an Oct. 6 Bloomberg report, CFTC staff are considering taking action against Ehrlich following an investigation concluding the former CEO violated U.S. derivatives regulations prior to Voyager’s bankruptcy filing. The firm filed for Chapter 11 protection in July 2022 amid the crypto market downturn.
Ehrlich was reportedly “angered and perplexed” by the claims:
“These allegations appear to be one of those times where the referees are making new rules and calling foul after the game has ended.”
Voyager, still in the middle of bankruptcy proceedings, was already under scrutiny from the U.S. Federal Trade Commission “for [its] deceptive and unfair marketing of cryptocurrency to the public.” A bankruptcy court approved Voyager’s plan to repay customers in May, and the case was ongoing at the time of publication.
The CFTC has several cases pending against crypto firms that have the potential to make waves across the U.S. regulatory space, but many of the enforcement actions in 2023 have been brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, have pushed for authorities to dismiss a CFTC lawsuit filed in March, while many executives at Binance.US have left the exchange amid regulatory scrutiny.
Coinbase, Kraken, Ripple, a16z and others pressed the Senate to add explicit protections for developers and non-custodial services in the market structure bill.
Reform’s plan was meant to be detailed. Instead, there’s more confusion.
The party had grown weary of the longstanding criticism that their tough talk on immigration did not come with a full proposal for what they would do to tackle small boats if they came to power.
So, after six months of planning, yesterday they attempted to put flesh on to the bones of their flagship policy.
At an expensive press conference in a vast airhanger in Oxford, the headline news was clear: Reform UK would deport anyone who comes here by small boat, arresting, detaining and then deporting up to 600,000 people in the first five years of governing.
They would leave international treaties and repeal the Human Rights Act to do it
But, one day later, that policy is clear as mud when it comes to who this would apply to.
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Image: Nigel Farage launched an airport-style departures board to illustrate how many illegal migrants have arrived in the UK. Pic: PA
I asked Farage at the time of the announcement whether this would apply to women and girls – an important question – as the basis for their extreme policy seemed to hinge on the safety of women and girls in the UK.
He was unequivocal: “Yes, women and children, everybody on arrival will be detained.
“And I’ve accepted already that how we deal with children is a much more complicated and difficult issue.”
But a day later, he appeared to row back on this stance at a press conference in Scotland, saying Reform is “not even discussing women and children at this stage”.
He later clarified that if a single woman came by boat, then they could fall under the policy, but if “a woman comes with children, we will work out the best thing to do”.
A third clarification in the space of 24 hours on a flagship policy they worked on over six months seems like a pretty big gaffe, and it only feeds into the Labour criticism that these plans aren’t yet credible.
If they had hoped to pivot from rhetoric to rigour, this announcement showed serious pitfalls.
But party strategists probably will not be tearing out too much hair over this, with polling showing Reform UK still as the most trusted party on the issue of immigration overall.
The “White Whale” increased his social media pressure campaign to $2.5 million after claiming that MEXC requested an in-person KYC verification in Malaysia.