U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein in Brooklyn ruled that Bitcoin (TIKER: BTC.EXANTE) can be regulated as commodities by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), Reuters reported.
CFTC is thus eligible to bring a fraud lawsuit against New York resident Patrick McDonnell and his company Coin Drop Markets, allowing the case to go forward.
In its lawsuit, announced in January, the CFTC said that since about January 2017, McDonnell and his company fraudulently offered customers virtual currency trading advice.
The agency said the customers never received the advice they paid for, and that Coin Drop Markets was never registered with the CFTC. It said that McDonnell took down the company’s website and stopped responding to customers.
The CFTC first determined that cryptocurrencies are commodities in 2015.
The U.S. Congress is yet to pass any laws regulating virtual currencies, while CFTC and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) have warned of the need to combat fraud in the virtual currency markets.