Cases filed in the past year by the DOJ, CFTC, and SEC represent a new phase in the US government’s digital asset enforcement efforts.

By Douglas K. Yatter, Matthew Valenti, and Deric Behar

Expanding beyond their earlier focus on registration and compliance violations and retail fraud, enforcement agencies have also begun to address other types of conduct involving digital assets. One such area is market manipulation. In the past year, the Department of Justice, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and the Securities and Exchange Commission each pursued cases alleging manipulation of the prices of digital assets.

The advent of this type of action has not yet received broad attention, perhaps because most of these cases also involved other types of conduct that may have obscured this novel set of claims. This article, published on Law360 by Latham lawyers Doug Yatter, Matthew Valenti, and Deric Behar, discusses five recent cases of note and offers insights into this emerging area of enforcement.