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- 1 The crypto industry has seen some big instances of fraud in the last few years.
- 2 The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is using whistleblowers to prevent such circumstances.
- 3 Recently, the CFTC commissioner talked about the role of whistleblowers in ridding the industry of corruption.
Whistleblowers are the unsung heroes who dare to go against the system to make things right. The reason they are so valuable is that corruption knows no bounds these days. It can creep into the work culture of any industry and disrupt things adversely. It can stop innovation and start favoring a few over the rest. And before one even knows, it could make the whole system irreplaceable too. That’s why, whistleblowers have gained so much attention.
Scams are not so uncommon in emerging industries like crypto. This brings the attention of the thriving decentralized community to whistleblowers and their role.
Highest Number of Whistleblower Tips From Crypto Industry
On Tuesday, the CFTC Commissioner Christy Goldsmith Romero released a statement. She said that the regulator has received over 1530 whistleblower tips this year from the crypto domain. Notably, this is the highest amount ever that emerged from this industry. While revealing the info, the commissioner stressed that fraud and illegality pervade this niche.
Romero stated that the growing adoption of crypto has brought more retail customers under the ambit of CFTC’s jurisdiction. Moreover, it’s making the Whistleblower Program and the Office of Customer Education and Outreach more significant. She said that whistleblowers save a great amount of time and resources for the agency. It has also become important to stop the fraud at the earliest to prevent drastic instances like the FTX collapse.
In the past few years, the regulator has taken action against several crypto firms and individuals. It includes the case of Voyager co-founder Stephen Ehrlich too. She further revealed that the agency has started focusing on DeFi lately. It came across a few platforms that were violating registration norms last month. The agency took action against ZeroEx, OPyn, and Deridex over the same issue.
Nature of Tips That the Agency Received
Talking about the nature of tips, Romero said there were quite a few types. The majority of them involved pump-and-dump schemes, refusal to withdraw, and false representations of money-making. As per the report, the volume of tips related to digital assets and romance scams has been growing. These schemes follow a rather genuine-looking modus operandi.
They usually start with a text from the wrong number. Later, the scammers show interest in the victims and dupe them romantically. Eventually, they gain access to the money and vanish in thin air.
The financial year 2023 saw some positive actions that encouraged whistleblowers to continue their work. Reportedly, the agency awarded cumulative sum of $16 Million to the informants. Notably, the information they provided led to successful enforcement actions.
Future of Crypto and Whistleblowers
It’s almost impossible to eliminate the scope of corruption from any industry. That is why whistleblowers will continue to play a significant role in crypto and various other spaces. Their contribution will be invaluable in the decentralized landscape. However, one can expect these instances to reduce in the next few years as most of the world will have a regulatory framework for digital assets. The world can wait and see how all this pans out for the crypto sphere and whistleblowers.
Andrew is a blockchain developer who developed his interest in cryptocurrencies while pursuing his post-graduation major in blockchain development. He is a keen observer of details and shares his passion for writing, along with coding. His backend knowledge about blockchain helps him give a unique perspective to his writing skills, and a reliable craft at explaining the concepts such as blockchain programming, languages and token minting. He also frequently shares technical details and performance indicators of ICOs and IDOs.
