NEW YORK, May 23 (Reuters) - A top United States regulator said on Tuesday that there is no way to police all cryptocurrency fraud because there are so many, though his agency is working on several major cases.
Christy Goldsmith Romero, one of the five commissioners of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), said that cryptocurrency cases represent about 20% of the agency's portfolio, including recent civil cases against exchanges. Binance and FTX.
"There's just a lot of fraud in the space," Goldsmith Romero said at a white-collar crime conference at the New York City Bar Association. "There's just no way we can keep an eye on all the fraud, but we have to do something."
CFTC Chairman Rostin Behnam has sought greater authority from lawmakers for the agency to oversee crypto spot markets.
Goldsmith Romero rejected the idea that there was a "turf war" between the CFTC and the Securities and Exchange Commission over cryptocurrency regulation, but acknowledged that many of the industry's products are new and that agencies "were still trying to to solve it."
He also said that crypto firms should not view the CFTC as a potential friendlier regulator than the SEC's deeper pocket.
"I don't like the idea that in any way the CFTC is a light touch," Goldsmith Romero said. "'Light Touch Regulator' would never be written on my tombstone."
In March, the CFTC sued Binance and Changpeng Zhao, its founder and CEO, for allegedly operating a bogus compliance program.
Zhao called the complaint an "incomplete recitation of the facts."
The CFTC's case against FTX, now bankrupt, accuses the exchange and founder Sam Bankman-Fried of causing the loss of more than $8 billion in customer deposits.
Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty to related criminal charges from the US Department of Justice.
Reporting by Luc Cohen in New York; Edited by Cynthia Osterman
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