Release Number 8590-22
Washington, D.C. — The Commodity Futures Trading Commission today issued an order simultaneously filing and settling charges against respondent bZeroX, LLC (bZeroX) and its founders Tom Bean (Bean) and Kyle Kistner (Kistner) (collectively, respondents) for illegally offering leveraged and margined retail commodity transactions in digital assets; engaging in activities only registered futures commission merchants (FCM) can perform; and failing to adopt a customer identification program as part of a Bank Secrecy Act compliance program, as required of FCMs.
The respondents engaged in these activities in connection with a decentralized blockchain-based software protocol that functioned similarly to a trading platform. The order requires the respondents to pay a $250,000 civil monetary penalty and to cease and desist from further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) and CFTC regulations, as charged.
Simultaneously, the CFTC filed a federal civil enforcement action in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California charging the Ooki DAO—a decentralized autonomous organization and successor to bZeroX that operated the same software protocol as bZeroX—with violating the same laws as the respondents. The CFTC seeks restitution, disgorgement, civil monetary penalties, trading and registration bans, and injunctions against further violations of the CEA and CFTC regulations, as charged.
