CFTC Commissioner Says Majority of Tips in Whistleblower Program Involve Crypto

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) says that most of the tips called into its Whistleblower Program in 2023 involved crypto.

In a statement, CFTC Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero says the agency received a record-breaking 1,530 tips through the Whistleblower Program this year.

“As a former Inspector General who knows firsthand how important whistleblowers are, I wholeheartedly support whistleblowers and the CFTC’s Whistleblower Program, and am very proud of the Program’s outsized results.”

The Whistleblower Program gives monetary rewards to those who voluntarily provide the CFTC with information about violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) that led to successful enforcement actions with monetary sanctions exceeding $1 million.

Whistleblowers get between 10% and 30% of the monetary sanctions that violators pay and the CFTC has so far given nearly $350 million in rewards for over $3 billion in enforcement sanctions. That amount includes the $16 million that was awarded this year, of which two whistleblowers received more than $15 million for the information and assistance they provided in what became successful enforcement cases.

“The Program provides confidential protection to whistleblowers. The Program also recognizes that incentives in the forms of monetary awards increase the number of whistleblower tips.”

Romero says that whistleblowers mostly reported violations related to digital assets in 2023.

“The majority of the tips received this year involved crypto—an area that continues to have pervasive fraud and other illegality.”

The statement comes as the CFTC goes after several crypto firms this year. In March, the regulator filed a complaint against Binance alleging that the world’s largest crypto exchange failed to properly register with the US commodities watchdog.

The agency also filed enforcement actions against decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols ZeroEx, Opyn and Deridex for offering illegal derivatives trading.

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