Notice: the CFTC's primary jurisdiction comes from the fact that Bitcoin futures products rely on Coinbase's spot market activity. Congress recently gave the C

Notice: the CFTC's primary jurisdiction comes from the fact that Bitcoin futures products rely on Coinbase's spot market activity. 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. It is why the CFTC bothers to mention the following: "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." 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" 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.