On August 9, the National Futures Association (NFA) announced the effective date of its recently adopted Interpretive Notice, Disclosure Requirements for NFA Members Engaging in Virtual Currency Activities. The Interpretative Notice will go into effect on October 31 (“Effective Date”).

The Interpretive Notice establishes disclosure requirements for futures commission merchants (FCMs), investment banks (IBs), commodity pool operator (CPOs) and commodity trading advisor (CTAs) that engage in activities related to virtual currencies or virtual currency derivatives. Beginning on the Effective Date, FCM and IBs that are NFA members must provide virtual currency derivative customers with certain NFA and Commodity Futures Trading Commission advisories at or before the time they trade a virtual currency derivative and must provide the advisories to customers that traded virtual currency derivatives prior to the Effective Date by November 30. There is also standardized disclosure that must be provided in relation to spot trades. The Interpretive Notice also requires CPO and CTAs that are NFA members to review and make any necessary updates to disclosure or offering documents for pools, exempt pools, or managed account programs that trade virtual currencies or virtual currency derivatives by November 21.

The NFA’s announcement is available here.

The Corporate & Financial Weekly Digest previously covered the NFA’s submission of the Interpretive Notice to the CFTC for approval here.

In addition, more details relating to the interpretive notice are available in Gary DeWaal’s July 27, 2018 Between Bridges issue of Bridging the Week.