LedgerX Accuses Former CFTC Chairman Christoper Giancarlo of Bias and Vendetta

LedgerX, the cryptocurrency derivatives firm has recently accused Christopher Giancarlo, the former chairman of the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), of bias and playing vendetta and thereby blocking the approval of its Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) registration.

In two official letters accessed by CoinDesk, LedgerX noted that Giancarlo has some personal bias against the company CEO Paul Chou.

The company’s first letter mentions: “We have strong reason to believe that this unreasonable delay that is in clear violation of the Commodity Exchange Act is related to the Chairman’s animus towards a blog post written by our CEO.”

Compared to the heads of other regulatory agencies in the United States, Giancarlo is known to have a much friendly approach for digital assets and its associated investment products.

LedgerX CEO has also confirmed that the recent letters sent by his company are real and accurate. In another explosive accusation, LedgerX mentions that Giancarlo called one of their company executives and board members, explaining:

“[Giancarlo] told him that he was going to make sure our DCO order was revoked within two weeks, due to a blog post written by myself the previous year implying that preferential treatment was being given to larger companies so he could ‘cement his legacy.’ This refers to the ICE / Bakkt approval, which was running into issues that were frustrating the chairman.”

CFTC spokesperson Michael Short refused to speak anything on these allegations. However, he asserted that the agency treats all entities equally and that LedgerX business needs to have “extensive consideration”.

The CFTC had earlier requested LedgerX to conduct a SOC 1 Type audit and acquire insurance to make sure that the derivatives platform is ensuring all technical and legal matters. However, LedgerX said that these requirements were entirely bogus.

Besides, LedgerX also accuses one of the CFTC staffers to tamper with their audit process. In another big accusation, LedgerX COO Juthica Chou tweeted: “Previous chairman wanted to revoke LX license bc Bakkt efforts not moving along. Having no legitimate reason to revoke our license, staff resorted to contacting our independent auditors to tamper with audit to give commission reason to revoke license. Staff admitted & apologized”.

While LedgerX accuses CFTC of doing favouritism towards big players like Bakkt and stalling their progress, nothing can be said in concrete at this point. It remains to be seen if LedgerX would consider any further legal action in this matter.