Litecoin (LTC) has surged nearly 20% over the past three days after the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) referred to the asset as a commodity in its legal action.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and CFTC unsealed an indictment against cryptocurrency exchange KuCoin and its founders Chun Gan and Ke Tang.
The DOJ alleged that the exchange operated an unlicensed money transfer business, failed to maintain an adequate anti-money laundering (AML) program, and received more than $5 billion in suspicious criminal proceeds.
The CFTC also charged KuCoin with illegally processing OTC commodity futures transactions, among other alleged violations.
In the complaint, the regulator alleges that certain digital assets are commodities.
“KuCoin, which describes itself as the ‘people’s exchange,’ is a centralized digital asset exchange headquartered in the Republic of Seychelles, the Cayman Islands, and Singapore, with 27 million customers in 200 countries, including the United States, and a cumulative trading volume of $3.6 trillion.
During the period, KuCoin solicited and accepted orders, accepted assets for margin, and provided facilities for trading futures, swaps and leveraged, margin or financial retail transactions involving digital assets, commodities including Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum. It was operated. (ETH) and Litecoin (LTC).”
The CFTC also mentioned the same three cryptocurrency assets as products in its complaint against Binance last year.
This claim directly contradicts comments made by U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Gary Gensler, who claimed that all coins other than Bitcoin will be securities in 2023. Earlier this year, Gensler declined to answer when asked whether ETH was considered a security or a commodity.
LTC is trading at $105.75 at the time of this writing, up about 20% from $88.40 on Tuesday.
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