The co-founder and former chief executive officer of Voyager Digital Ltd. broke derivatives rules while at the helm of the crypto lender, leading to its bankruptcy and $1.7 billion in customer losses, U.S. regulators alleged yesterday, Bloomberg News reported. The Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed a lawsuit against Stephen Ehrlich in US federal court in New York, claiming he and Voyager “fraudulently solicited participation in and operated a digital asset trading and custody platform.” The agency accused the firm of luring customers with promises of returns as high as 12% on certain crypto holdings and making misleading statements about the platform’s safety. Through those enticements, Voyager facilitated billions of dollars worth of transactions involving digital assets that were commodities, including Bitcoin and Circle’s USD Coin, according to the CFTC. Voyager was one of the dominoes to fall in 2022’s crypto chaos. The industry is still reeling from the tumult, which culminated in the collapse of crypto trading giant FTX. The criminal trial of FTX’s co-founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, began last week in New York.
