The no-action letter comes amid growing acceptance by US regulators of prediction-style markets and event contracts during an election year. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a US financial regulator, issued a no-action letter to crypto derivatives exchange Bitnomial on Thursday, clearing the way for the exchange to offer event contracts and prediction markets. The CFTC letter alleviates Bitnomial from the strict reporting requirements for asset swaps under current US rules, a hurdle that is impractical for fast-moving platforms like prediction markets, where tens of thousands of these swaps may occur in a day. Bitnomial must still provide transparent consumer-facing data on its website, including timestamps and sales data for contract markets, and provide relevant data to the CFTC when requested, according to the terms of the letter. All positions must also be collateralized, meaning they cannot be leveraged and must be backed 1:1 to ensure liquidity and prevent cascading liquidations that thr...
The US president reportedly said he had no intention of pardoning the former FTX CEO, and defended his family’s connections to the crypto industry. US President Donald Trump reportedly will not grant a pardon to Sam “SBF” Bankman-Fried, who is serving a 25-year sentence for his role in the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX. According to a Thursday interview with Trump by The New York Times, the president said he had no intention of pardoning Bankman-Fried and others, including music producer Sean Combs and former New Jersey Senator Robert Menendez. Bankman-Fried has been behind bars since August 2023 when a federal judge revoked his bail before his criminal trial. In the same interview, Trump pushed back against questions regarding potential conflicts of interest with the cryptocurrency industry. The president and his family have connections to the Bitcoin mining company American Bitcoin, the platform behind the USD1 stablecoin World Liberty Financial and through his personal memecoin, Official Trump (...