A top U.S. regulator said on Tuesday there is no way to police all cryptocurrency fraud because there is so much, though her agency is working on several big cases.
Christy Goldsmith Romero, one of five commissioners at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said cryptocurrency cases account for about 20% of the agency’s portfolio, including recent civil cases against the exchanges Binance and FTX.
“There’s just a lot of fraud in the space,” Goldsmith Romero said at a white collar crime conference at the New York City Bar Association. “There’s just no way we can police all the fraud, but we’ve got to do something.”
CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam has sought greater authority from lawmakers for the agency to oversee spot crypto markets.
Goldsmith Romero pushed back on the idea there was a “turf war” between the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission over regulating crypto, but acknowledged that many of the industry’s products are new and the agencies were “still trying to figure it…