A US regulator has sued Gemini Trust Company, founded by Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss of Facebook fame, for allegedly making false or misleading statements in connection with the self-certification of a bitcoin futures product.
The Commodity Futures Trading Commission seeks “disgorgement of ill-gotten gains”, civil monetary penalties, injunctions relating to registration and trading, and an injunction against further violations of the Commodity Exchange Act.
The complaint alleges that in 2017, Gemini made false or misleading statements of material facts, or omitted to state material facts, to the CFTC during an evaluation of the potential self-certification of a bitcoin futures contract.
The proposed bitcoin futures contract was to be settled by reference to the spot bitcoin price on the relevant day as determined by an auction held on Gemini’s digital asset trading platform.
Layoffs at Gemini
The commission said Gemini omitted or misrepresented whether the proposed bitcoin futures contract would be readily susceptible to manipulation.
“Nuts! We obviously disagree with this lol,” Tyler Winklevoss wrote on Twitter.
The suit comes as Gemini is laying off staff for the first time since the firm was founded.
The layoffs will affect about 10% of Gemini’s overall workforce. The company — which has offices in New York, Chicago and Portland, Oregon — has about 1,000 employees, according to its LinkedIn page.
The Winklevosses informed Gemini staffers of the cuts in a memo on Thursday in which they admitted that digital assets were in “contraction”, a period that has become known colloquially as the “crypto winter”.
The twins sprung to fame over their legal tangles with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg over their participation in the social media giant’s earliest days. They were portrayed by Armie Hammer in the hit film “The Social Network”.
- George Russell
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