The Commodities Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced that its FinTech research wing, LabCFTC will be hosting a series of interactive virtual events during autumn 2020.

LabCFTC is an initiative under the General Counsel’s office in 2017 aimed at promoting FinTech innovation and competition. The office has been very active with over 400 different private meetings held with innovators in the last three years.
The series, Empower Innovation 2020, will facilitate dialogues amongst innovators, regulators, market participants, and the public around FinTech innovation. The series of virtual events will consist of a combination of fireside chats, digital roundtables, and tech talks from industry experts. Registration for the event will be open in August.
LabCFTC will also be announcing the winner of Project Streetlamp, the CFTC’s first science prize competition. The focus of Project Streetlamp is to challenge innovators to utilize artificial intelligence (AI) to help with a CFTC enforcement tool to identify foreign entities to add to its Registration Deficient List (RED List). The RED List is meant to identify foreign entities that act in a way that requires CFTC registration.
Due to the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic, a lot of LabCFTC’s priorities have been delayed, and the top priority across the Commission is to address the market and to help market participants during this time. The Empower Innovation 2020 series will be held as a series of virtual events due to COVID-19 and in lieu of the 2020 FinTech Forward conference.
CFTC Chairman Heath P. Tarbert said in a release shared with Blockchain.News:
“Encouraging innovation and enhancing the regulatory experience for market participants is essential to what we do at the CFTC. As our markets adapt in the wake of COVID-19, so too must we innovate and adapt. I am incredibly proud of the LabCFTC team for working through the challenges of assembling innovators and global regulators virtually to facilitate these conversations, and I look forward to participating in what I am sure will be engaging and informative events.”
In an exclusive interview with Blockchain.News, LabCFTC Director, and Chief Innovation Officer Melissa Netram said:
“I think the crisis showed us even more of how important financial innovation and technology is. If this happened 20 years ago we would not be able to continue our normal functions of the day, to work remotely."