U.S. regulators have targeted former Voyager Digital CEO Steve Ehrlich with lawsuits claiming he engaged in fraud and deliberately misrepresented his customers’ government protections.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced related actions against Ehrlich on Thursday, with the CFTC also including in its court filing that Circle's USDC stablecoin and bitcoin as commodities.
The CFTC accused Ehrlich of defrauding customers by misleading them about the strength of the company and doing business without proper registrations. The FTC said he lied about customers’ funds being protected by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
“Ehrlich and Voyager lied to Voyager customers,” said Ian McGinley, the CFTC’s enforcement director, in a statement about the suit, which calls for restitution, penalties and industry bans for the former executive. “While representing they would treat customers’ digital asset commodities safely and responsibly, behind the scenes, they took shockingly reckless risks with their customers’ assets, leading to Voyager’s bankruptcy and huge customer losses.”
However, one of the agency's commissioners, Caroline Pham, argued the CFTC's position that the company should have registered as a commodity pool operator is a bad interpretation of the law.
The enforcement action's definition of commodity pools “would seem to include commonplace lending activity—like taking deposits and providing loans,” she said in a...
Last week, the US jobless claims report stole the show as initial claims jumped to a new cycle high and the highest level since 2021. That triggered a more dovish repricing in interest rates expec...