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Alex Dovbnya📰 NewsThe drama surrounding LedgerX and its battle with the CFTC takes a new twist with the company's CEO accusing the regulator of "personal animus"
They were supposed to be ahead of Bakkt in the Bitcoin futures race but ended up in a bizarre battle with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC). Now, cryptocurrency derivatives exchange LedgerX doubles down on the accusations directed at the US regulator, claiming that the Chariman's "personal animous" is the reason behind the approval delay.
Sparring with the CFTC
According to the two letters obtained by Coindesk, LedgerX might not be in the regulator's good graces anymore simply because of a certain blog post written by the company's CEO Paul Chou.
“We have strong reason to believe that this unreasonable delay that is in clear violation of the Commodity Exchange Act is related to the Chairman’s animus towards a blog post written by our CEO,” one of the letters states.
While responding to these accusations, CFTC representative Michael Short emphasized that all entities are subjected to equal treatment by the regulatory watchdog.
At the end of July, LedgerX announced that it became the first company to offer physically-settled Bitcoin futures. However, the CFTC was quick to put an end to the celebration by claiming that the upstart was yet to get the approval to offer this unique product.
As reported by U.Today, Chou threatened to sue the CFTC for anti-competitive practices after the incident.
The hype might not be justified
Meanwhile, Bakkt, after numerous postponements, finally went live on Sept. 23. Despite all this hassle to gain first-mover advantage, the ICE-backed exchange has so far shown very underwhelming results. Its daily trading volume is significantly lower compared to that of CME Group, which prompted some pundits to call it a flop.
On top of that, tongues have been waggling that Bakkt's slow start might be the reason why the Bitcoin price flash-crashed to the $8,000 level.