In a news release published today, the United States Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced plans to hold a meeting at its headquarters in Washington, D.C. next month to discuss Non-Deliverable Forwards (NDFs) and bitcoin.
Maybe you’re asking yourself, what in the world is a NDF? I, too, had the question. Here’s what came up, according to the NASDAQ glossary:
[blockquote style=”2″]Agreement regarding a position in a specified currency, a specified exchange rate, and a specified future settlement date, that does not result in delivery of currencies. Rather one party in the agreement makes a payment to the other party on the basis of the exchange rate at the future date.[/blockquote]
And, of course, we all know what bitcoin is so no need to get into that. But it’s interesting that the digital currency — which is seemingly taking the financial world by storm — is a topic of discussion.
The CFTC says the meeting will be made up of two panels. Panel one will discuss whether or not a clearing mandate is appropriate for NDFs (“with a particular focus on how such a mandate would impact foreign exchange contracts,” they say), and the second panel will be discussing the CFTC’s jurisdiction when it comes to derivatives contracts that reference bitcoin.
The meeting will be taking place from 1:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. on October 9th at 1155 21st Street, NW, Washington, DC 20581. The meeting is open to members of the public on a first-come, first-served basis.
While the CFTC isn’t the first government agency to explore the topic of bitcoin and digital currencies, its interest in the topic no doubt stems from bitcoin’s increasing popularity. What will come of the meeting? Well, we’ll just have to wait and see.