US regulator touts to ‘aggressively police' crypto in new report

cointelegraph.com:

The U.S. commodities regulator certainly doesn’t want to look like it's going easy on crypto, revealing it was behind 18 separate enforcement actions targeting digital assets in the 2022 fiscal year. 

In an Oct. 20 report from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), a total of 82 enforcement actions were filed in 2022’s fiscal year, imposing $2.5 billion in “restitution, disgorgement and civil monetary penalties either through settlement or litigation.”

The CFTC said that 20% of the enforcements were aimed at digital asset businesses, with chairman Rostin Behnam stating:

One of the more recent CFTC enforcement actions that gained notoriety in the crypto world was a $250,000 penalty against bZeroX, its successor Ooki DAO, and its founders in September.

The action sparked fierce criticism from the community for going after the members of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), with CFTC commissioner Summer Mersinger labeling the move a "blatant ‘regulation by enforcement.’"

The CFTC also highlighted actions taken during the year against the operators of the Digitex Futures exchange for illegal futures offerings, manipulation of its native token DGTX, and failure to provide a customer identification and anti-money laundering program.

It also took action against Bitfinex for engaging in “illegal, off-exchange retail commodity transactions in digital assets with U.S. persons,” and operating without registering as a futures commission merchant (FCM).

Meanwhile, the report pointed to action against Tether Holdings for making “untrue or misleading statements” and “omissions of material” in connection with its USDT stablecoin Tether was ordered to pay a civil monetary penalty of $41 million.

It also targeted South