The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is reportedly investigating Jump Crypto, a crypto trading and Web3 infrastructure development firm of Jump Trading Group.
Fortune reported that CFTC was also looking into the Chicago-based crypto firm’s investing activities.
CFTC and SEC have sued multiple crypto companies
In the past two years, the CFTC and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), have both initiated investigations and filed charges against multiple crypto exchanges, platforms and individuals.
CFTC has in the past year or so sued FTX and former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, Binance and its former CEO Changpeng Zhao and KuCoin. Meanwhile, top exchanges and individuals to come under massive regulatory scrutiny from the SEC include Binance, Terraform Labs and former CEO Do Kwon, Coinbase, Kraken and Bittrex.
The SEC also charged Ripple and top executives at the company and just reportedly ended its investigation into Ethereum 2.0, details of which Consensys shared.
In its case against Terraform Labs, the SEC listed a “U.S. trading firm,” as having illegally helped to prop up depegging stablecoin TerraUSD (UST) in 2021. That firm turned out to be Jump Trading and Terra collapsed in mid-2022 to see a massive contagion hit the crypto market.
Jump Crypto also lost almost $300 million when FTX imploded later that same year.
Jump Crypto’s $10 million political donation
News of the CFTC’s probe into the trading activities of Jump Crypto surfaced on Thursday and come just a day after its $10 million donation to U.S. political action committee (PAC) looking to bring crypto-friendly legislators to Congress.
Jump Crypto has so far contributed $15 million to the PAC, which has received multi-million dollar donations from the likes of Coinbase, Ripple and Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).
The super PAC, Fairshake, has amassed a staggering $169 million, and latest regulatory filings indicate the entity still held about $109 million.