There have been several developments of note in the crypto currency and regulatory world since our last post on the topic (see here). A few of note are covered in this post.

Crypto currency developments

There have been several rulings and comments from regulators about the status of crypto currencies. The CFTC announced here that from their perspective a virtual currency can be treated as a commodity. This has several implications, including in relation to the case mentioned.  The matter is further discussed in this article on ETF.com.

In the UK, the House of Commons Treasury Committee published this report on the regulation of crypto assets. It includes concerns at the risks posed by cryptos, and suggestions on how they should be regulated. The findings are summarised in this post on the Norton Rose Fulbright website.

Blockchain developments

Last week, ISDA published this paper entitled “Smart Derivatives Contracts: From Concept to Construction”. It looks at different aspects of constructing practical smart contracts for use in derivatives from a legal and technical perspective. It makes reference to ISDA’;s Common Domain Model(see here)  and is intended to see the model used in practice.

In the commodities sector, komgo SA launched a blockchain based platform to support commodty trade finance (see here). It will offer products to support the KYC and LC processes, as outlined here on the oilprice.com web site. The platform is also mentioned here on FT.com, working alongside the VAKT initiative (see here) which addresses post trade processing.

In the meantime this post on solarplaza.com discusses growing intrest in peer to peer energy trading, using Powerledger, LO3 energy and others, in Asia. This article on cryptodaily.com gives the example of a peer to peer energy trading scheme in Thailand.  In the UK capacity market, a blockchain based platform called Electron has been used to trade a Capacity Market Obligation, as reported here on the Current News web site.

Some of these matters will be discussed later today in the Blockchain panel at the ETOT conference in London (see here).