LedgerX has appointed former commissioner of the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission as one of the board members. The appointment comes at the time when bitcoin community is still debating about the recent decision by CFTC to consider bitcoin as a commodity.
Mark Wetjen was earlier appointed as one of the five commissioners of US CFTC in 2011. His name was nominated by the President of United States, Barack Obama. Apart from being the commissioner, he has also been an acting chairman and sponsor of the organization’s Global Markets Advisory Committee.
LedgerX is a bitcoin based online institutional trading and clearing platform founded by Paul L. Chou along with Juthica Chou and Zach Dexter. The company, with a great team who have prior experience working with/alongside Goldman Sachs, MIT and CFTC is currently awaiting clearance from US CFTC for bitcoin trade and clearing options.
Mark Wetjen is not the only CFTC alumni to be part of LedgerX. Former chairman of CFTC, James Newsome is also one of directors on LedgerX’ board. James Newsome has served as the chairman of CFTC till 2004 and then as the President and CEO of New York Mercantile Exchange and so on.
LedgerX has so far received only temporary clearance for Swap Execution Facility (SEP) and awaiting for Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO) at the moment. According to Paul Chou, the company will start operations only after it receives all the required licenses. Now with James Newsome and Mark Wetjen both of whom have knowledge about the inner workings of CFTC joining the company, LedgerX will be able to adopt the right approach to get their licenses approved from CFTC.
However, it might take at least a month or more for LedgerX to work through the bureaucracy to obtain SEP and DCO licenses.